


(Never) Turn Your Back to the Sea

by DiscordantWords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, John Comes Home, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Season/Series 04, Series 4 Fix-It, Sherlock Is Not Okay, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-09-25 22:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9848774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: Baker Street is very much the same. Only different.And Sherlock is just trying not to drown.





	1. Wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thetimemoves (WriteOut)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteOut/gifts).
  * Translation into Polski available: [(Nigdy nie) odwracaj się plecami do morza](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979762) by [Pirania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pirania/pseuds/Pirania)



> This story is a gift for [thetimemoves](http://www.thetimemoves.tumblr.com/), who bid on me in the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction. This was such a wonderful event, and prompted such amazing generosity from so many people towards some very good causes. I was happy to be a part of it. 
> 
> This is shaping up to be somewhere in the vicinity of 3-5 chapters. I'm hoping to stick to a weekly posting schedule.

*

The smiley face was wrong. 

No, not _wrong_ exactly, it was impossible for such a thing to be wrong but— 

Perhaps different was the better word. 

The smiley face was _different._

It had been a good effort. An excellent effort. He'd found replacement wallpaper in the same design as the original. John had even gone out and purchased a can of Michigan hardcore propellant in the proper shade. He'd gotten the placement mostly right. Sherlock had provided the bullet holes himself. 

And yet it wasn't _quite_ the same.

The differences were subtle. The yellow paint intersected with the wallpaper pattern slightly lower than it had before (likely due to John's shorter stature.) The paint had been applied with a heavier hand, a more measured, controlled spray compared to his own broad bored sweep all those years ago. 

The effect was—unsettling. 

On first glance, upon entering the room, everything looked exactly the same. Oh, a few minor differences—a new coffee table (rounded edges, specifically chosen with fragile bruisable-breakable uncoordinated toddler in mind), a sturdier cabinet to gather his odds-and-ends. New odds-and-ends to replace the ones that had been lost. Surface changes, nothing more. The kind that happened in any home, over the years. The foreground shifting while the background remained static.

Perhaps others simply noticed the surface differences and looked no further, but he—

Well. His mind was unable to stop noticing. And noticing. And _noticing._

The distinctive wallpaper behind the sofa. Same pattern. Same shade. Nonetheless, the colours were bolder, unaffected as they were by years of sunlight filtered through dusty windowglass. Were he to be handed a bloodstained swatch of that very paper at this very moment in time, he'd have been unable to deduce where in London it had come from. 

It was all close, _very_ close. But not quite the same. And when the flat was alive with the merry chaos that John and Rosie brought with them, when his own mind had been caught up in the rush of sorting out a client's troubles or some tangled mess that Scotland Yard couldn't seem to unravel—then—then it was all right. It was ignorable. 

But when he was alone, when John had gone home, when there was nothing for him but silence, hours and hours of thick hateful _silence_ , then—well. Then the differences leapt out at him, disorienting, disturbing. 

And now—now when he shut his eyes on the sofa and opened them again in warm late afternoon sunlight, it was always to a room that was the same, but different. 

The same. But different. Small shifts. Like a trick of the mind. It made him feel high, and not in the good way, not in the way he still sometimes (always) craved. In the way it had been before he'd latched onto the Culverton Smith case, where he'd been adrift, lost without John as an anchor point, helpless against the pull of his own currents. The world around him had felt overbright, warped and wrong, recognizable yet frighteningly alien. 

It was difficult to orient himself, in moments like that. In moments like _this._

Him, snapping awake sweat-soaked and half-panicked, his home _different_ , not quite right. The sudden fear that it had all been a dream, that none of it was real, that the weeks and months that had passed were only in his mind, that he was still off his tits on an impressive cocktail of narcotics, that John was still slipping away from him, farther and farther away—

But no. 

The coffee table, new, rounded. The smell of fresh paint and adhesive glue. The smiley face, carefully applied with John's steady hand. 

Real, all of it. Real. 

Still, he feared he'd made a mistake. He'd spent a good deal of time and money endeavoring to make the Baker Street flat look the same as it always had. To prove to himself that nothing had changed. 

Perhaps, instead, he should have simply tried to make it feel like home. 

A clink in the kitchen. Rustling, rattling. Someone in the cupboards. 

Wiggins, he thought. Wiggins cooking up a fresh batch. 

"Sherlock? Did I wake you up?"

John. 

Not Wiggins. Wiggins was gone. There was nothing in the kitchen but some new dishes and a microscope, liberated from Barts morgue after an exceedingly awkward conversation with Molly. Wiggins was gone, Sherlock was sober, and John was in the kitchen. 

He sat up, rubbed at his eyes. The room around him swam into disorienting focus. Home. 

John poked his head around the corner, looking somewhat abashed. "Sorry. I was trying to be quiet." 

"I wasn't asleep," Sherlock lied. "I was thinking." 

John ignored him, went back into the kitchen, back to rustling and rattling. Takeaway. Chinese from the place at the end of the street, judging by the sound of the plastic bag, which was noticeably thicker than bags provided by other establishments. And, well. The unmistakable smell in the air, which was arguably more obvious (and more enticing) than the packaging quality. 

He stood up, stretched. Looked around. "Where's—" 

"Mrs Hudson intercepted us at the front door," John said, coming into the room with opened cartons. Sherlock's stomach rumbled. "Insisted on taking her for half an hour." 

"Ah." 

"Don't look so disappointed, I'll go down and get her after we eat." 

"Disappointed?" he scoffed, looked up at the ceiling. "This is just my face." 

"Your disappointed face, yeah," John said. "Eat something." 

He sat down at the table, which he had not quite gotten around to cluttering up again. Accepted the carton set in front of him. 

They ate in silence, and while it wasn't quite as comfortable as the silences they'd shared years ago, back before—before everything—nor did it have the heavy awkward weight of more recent times. It was better. It was all right. It was pleasant. It was enough. 

When they were done eating, John cleared the plates away, went downstairs to fetch his daughter. He came back up with a heavier step. 

Sherlock smiled when he saw her. She smiled back, a gummy toothless grin, and stretched her arms out to him. 

He took her, walked her around the room, their usual circuit. She led the way, pointing to whatever caught her interest. He paused to let her inspect things, to reach out with little exploring fingers. He very carefully did not linger in any one area too long, did not look too closely, did not look up at the walls. 

Behind him, in the kitchen, John did the washing up. Put on the kettle. 

"That's a common vampire bat," Sherlock said. Rosie looked away from the glass case, fixed wide eyes on his face instead. "Its main food source is blood." 

"Ah," she said.

He made a noise of approval, moved on. He did not want to look at the bat for very long. It was very nicely displayed. It looked very similar to the old one, which had been burnt up and lost. 

The explosion had been damaging but not devastating. As she had done in all of the bizarre encounters leading up to their… adventure… at Sherrinford, Eurus had pulled her punch. By all rights, the grenade should have leveled the flat.

There should have been nothing left. 

"—lock? Sherlock."

He startled, turned around.

John was studying him from the doorway, frowning a little bit. He had clearly been attempting to get his attention for some time. A mug of tea steamed in his hands. He held it out, an offering.

"Lost you for a minute there," John said. 

"Just—thinking." 

Rosie fussed in his arms, and he readjusted his grip, settling her a bit more firmly against his hip. He reached out with his other hand for the mug, took a sip. 

"Right," John said. He cleared his throat, looked away. When he looked back, there was a smile on his face, all false cheer. 

Sherlock hated this part. 

"It's getting late," John said. "We ought to head home." 

"Of course," Sherlock said. 

He stood by the window and drank his tea while John bundled up Rosie for travel. 

"Good night," John said, finally. 

He watched them go, the pair of them, out into the night. Watched John hail a cab, carefully settle himself in with Rosie. Lifted his hand in farewell as John's gaze rose to where he stood in the window. 

*

He scrolled through his email, checked his tweets, found nothing at all of interest. Instead of his usual restless boredom, there was only exhaustion. 

He went down the hall to his bedroom. It had withstood admirably. The wooden door had been well scorched, of course, and he'd had to pay to have the burnt smell laundered out of his clothing and linens. But that was all. There'd been no lasting damage, no need to replace or repair. His pictures hadn't even fallen from the walls.

Below, he could just make out the faint sound of Mrs Hudson's television. 

He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth. Looked down at the running water, circling the drain. 

When he was done, he went back into the bedroom. Listened to the traffic down on Baker Street. Shut his eyes. 

*

He opened his eyes in Musgrave Hall, as he had every night since Sherrinford. 

Back home, the long-abused bones of the house groaning all around him and the smell of wet wood and rot heavy in the air. The wind buffeting the house moaned out its own haunting sound, a _haunted_ sound, punctuated by the gentle weeping of the manor's very own lady in white. 

Eurus in his arms, shoulders shaking with her own muted, terrible grief. 

He held on. 

John had taught him that. That grief wasn't pretty, grief wasn't all damp eyes and stoic silences. Grief was raw, hot and painful, ugly sobs and ragged breaths. Grief wasn't something that could be cured, or fixed, never completely, but it could be _shared._

John.

John was—

He felt the moment that she sensed his rising tension. She detached herself from his embrace, stood. Looked down at him with an odd expression—devoid of any real malice. He could not quite read her. He supposed he never really could. 

He wondered how often she had come here over the years, how often she'd slipped away from the prison she'd turned into a kingdom in order to roam the ruined halls of her childhood. 

She held out her hand. 

He took it without hesitating, let her tug him to his feet. 

They went down the stairs together. He trailed his hand along damp, peeling wallpaper, tried to remember. 

He knew the house. He knew its every door, knew every twist and turn and narrow hallway. He had, after all, used it as the frame of his mind palace. 

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked at the television screen. John, center stage, terrified, limned in moonlight.

"The water," Sherlock said. He tore his gaze from the screen, looked to Eurus. "Turn off the water." 

John was flailing, straining upward, his head tilted back. His nose and mouth barely broke the surface as he struggled, fingers grasping at slick rocks over his head. 

"Sh—" John's voice in his ear, broken static through the earpiece. "Sher—" 

"Eurus," Sherlock said. He leaned in, gave her his entire focus. She met his eyes; that familiar blue, dulled and bewildered and conflicted. "The water." 

She did not move for one long, terrible moment, John still gasping in his ear. Then she squared her shoulders and walked off down the hallway, quick and silent. She went through a door on her right and he followed on her heels. 

"Hold on," he murmured, quiet, so quiet, not sure if John could hear him over the roar of the water. 

Eurus—or someone—had assembled something of a makeshift command center in the little room under the stairs. Monitors lined the far wall, glowing dimly, cycling through security footage of the grounds. His eyes went to another angle on the well, drawn in by the sight of John, grasping and gasping and struggling. John _drowning._

She bypassed the monitors, flipped open a laptop. Typed, clicked. Her gaze intent, focused, skin tinged blue from the screen's glow. 

The water cascading over John's head slowed to a trickle, stopped. 

"Thank you," Sherlock said. 

She did not respond. 

He pressed his hand against the earpiece, strained to hear. "John?"

On the screen, John was still struggling. His fingers had found purchase on the rocks, his arms shaking with the effort of holding himself in place. His head thrown back, his face just barely breaking the surface. He was breathing in great heaving gulps, water sloshing up around him. 

He'd dragged himself up against the pull of the chains, had gotten as high as he possibly could. It was very nearly not enough. And he wouldn’t be able to maintain that grip for very long. 

"Where?" Sherlock asked.

She kept her gaze on the laptop, did not speak. 

"Please," he said. 

She turned to look at him. Blinked. 

"It's all right," he said, gentling his voice. "You're all right." 

"Sweetly," she said. She sounded almost wondering. "After all of this. All of it—years and years. And you still think sweetly." 

"We all have our failings." 

She studied him. He kept his eyes on her, did not let his gaze stray back to the monitor, where John was only just clinging on. 

_You,_ he tried to reassure her without speaking aloud. _You have my complete attention._

He thought of Victor, barely even the wisp of a memory now, just a scared little boy in a dark cold place. 

His own heart, flayed open and raw as he roamed and roamed, searching and begging, the fearless explorer turned pusillanimous, the inquisitive investigator failing at his first real test. The truth of him, revealed to be stupid, stupid after all, the way he'd always feared, daunted by the towering intellects that surrounded him. 

If he'd only been faster. If he'd only been smarter. If only—if only—

John's fingers, shaking with cold, dug in against the rocks. John, alive and breathing but lost, _lost_ , down in the dark with Victor's bones. 

"Please," Sherlock said. "Please tell me where to find him." He stooped down to her level, kept his voice soft, his posture nonthreatening. "Help me." 

She stood up, brushed past him. 

He followed.

*

He opened his eyes and was awake, the dream falling away like wisps of burnt paper. 

He did not know why it followed him this way. Why it still clung to him, after days, after weeks, after months. He had lived it, he had come through it. He was fine. John was fine. Mycroft was fine. Even Eurus, in her own way, was fine. 

He had followed her into the darkness. She had not betrayed his fragile trust. She had taken him to John.

And then they had gone home. 

Well. John had gone home. Baker Street had been in shambles. Sherlock had been forced to spend almost an entire week at Mycroft's.

He went out into the sitting room, did not look at the walls. The room seemed normal, in the periphery.

He opened his laptop, scanned through his emails. Hesitated over one name. Shut his eyes. 

An email from someone called Gloria Trevor. Subject: Victor. 

He clicked out of the email program without opening it. Hesitated, then slammed his laptop shut as well. Breathed. 

*

 _I told him I'd found Bluebeard's treasure,_ Eurus had said, barely a week ago, lifting her bow from the strings of her violin. She remained standing, holding the violin by its neck in her left hand, the bow in her right, her voice a shock after months of silence. 

Sherlock's own bow had faltered, a sour note trembling in the air. 

_Oh?_ he'd asked, finally. 

_He so wanted to impress you,_ she said. She was smiling a little bit, and it wasn't a mean smile, it was a fond smile, a nostalgic smile. Her eyes had gone distant. _I told him you'd be so pleased. It took us all day to walk there. I packed us snacks._

He could not quite remember specifics. He had spent years desperately overwriting and corrupting his own memories. But if he closed his eyes, if he concentrated, he could pick up a loose thread, could follow it back to a sundrenched morning where he'd discovered what it meant to feel lonely, what it meant to feel confused and helpless. What it meant to feel despair. 

_I didn't push him,_ she'd said. _He climbed down all on his own. Went splashing around in the dark, looking for a treasure chest. Didn't give a single thought as to how he'd carry the thing up if he did find it._

_He was six years old,_ Sherlock had said to her, quiet. _No one plans ahead at six._

_I did._

He'd lifted his own violin away from his shoulder, studied her. There was something terribly sad about her, forlorn, a specimen behind glass. A creature in a zoo. Hidden away, unfit for public consumption. 

_Are you angry with me?_

He'd wondered how it had happened, if she'd set out with the intention of killing Victor or if she'd just wanted a bit of mischief, if the idea had occurred to her once he'd gone willingly down into the dark without a rope or a plan for extricating himself. If she'd ever felt badly about it. 

_I am angry,_ he'd said, when he felt he could speak again. 

_Interesting,_ she'd said, and picked up her violin again. She played beautifully. 

*

Noise from downstairs, a crash and clatter against the door. Rosie's excited squeal, John's familiar tread on the stairs. Bumping along slowly, laden down with bags and baby. 

"Stopped off and got you some groceries," he said, dumping the bags on the table and flexing his hand. Rosie flailed in her carrier, already reaching out for Sherlock. 

Sherlock went into the kitchen, looked down at the bags. Tinned beans and soup and frozen vegetables and milk. A box of tea. Biscuits. 

"There was no need—" 

"Fridge looked a little bare yesterday, that's all," John said, opening the door, setting the milk on the top shelf. He frowned, looked over his shoulder. "You shouldn't take that as an encouragement to start piling up severed limbs again." 

"I haven't been able to secure a suitable replacement source for body parts," Sherlock admitted. He hadn't really tried. It didn't seem right, asking Molly. Not anymore.

"Well, thank God for small favors," John said. He was in a good mood, glib, jovial. He went on putting the groceries away. Like he lived there. Like he was home.

Rosie let out a sharp, impatient squeal, flailed her arms again. Sherlock went to her, unbuckled her from her carrier, picked her up. 

Circuit around the room, Rosie on his hip, pausing to let her examine each and every oddity she pointed at. 

"Dermestid beetles," he said, watching her tap on the glass. "Often used in taxidermy. They've proven quite adept at cleaning skeletons, actually. They can strip flesh from—" 

John made a sound from somewhere behind him. 

"—Ah, in any case," he said, stepping back. "These particular beetles are quite dead. Pinned for display. No need for worry." 

"And there won't be any live beetles, at any point, yeah?" 

Sherlock pressed his lips together, shrugged, tried to look noncommittal. "Well. One can never say with any degree of certainty. There are species of beetle known specifically for infesting the bow hair in instrument cases, for example, but—" 

"Sherlock," John was doing that thing, the thing he did where he said Sherlock's name in a very stern tone of voice but actually seemed to be laughing. He was the only person on earth who ever said Sherlock's name in that particular way. 

It wrenched something in Sherlock's chest, every time. 

He cleared his throat, shifted Rosie on his hip. She had discovered his hair and was determinedly tugging on it. He gently batted her hands away. 

When he looked back, John was watching them, his face soft. 

"No live beetles," Sherlock said. 

_Move back in,_ he didn't say.

*


	2. Islands

*

He was a child again and the world was bright and beautiful and open, promise thick in the salt air. He had a wooden sword strapped to his side (Mycroft had patiently helped him tie the knots, his own fingers clumsy and uncoordinated against the rope), his protection against marauding bands of pirates. 

He was handy with a sword, he thought, and he slipped it from the ropes to give a few trial swings. Other, lesser foes would quake with fear at the prospect of going up against him. 

They were at the beach, sand beneath his feet, and he could hear the sea, he could _smell_ the sea, but they had not quite reached the place where the surf broke against land. They were moving very slowly, his little family, laden down with picnic supplies and blankets and chairs and _Mycroft_ , slow enough to be a burden unto himself. 

Mummy had given him a cooler to carry, and he'd let it drop into the sand after a few stumbling steps, bored and impatient. She'd scolded him but he'd run off ahead, pretending not to hear her. 

They were moving much too slowly, the lot of them, and he wanted the water, wanted the wild surf and bracing air and ships on the horizon. He wanted to squint into the sun and imagine all of the adventures he was sure to have, shipwrecks and lost treasure and mysteries galore. 

He looked over his shoulder, calculated the distance between himself and Daddy, the most realistic threat to his freedom at the moment (approximately three meters, and Daddy with an armload of boring useless things he'd need to drop in order to give chase, ample opportunity), and bolted for the water. 

"Sherlock!" it wasn't Daddy yelling but Mycroft, Mycroft who was kind and patient but _boring_ , Mycroft who never wanted to do _anything_ , Mycroft who never wanted him to have any fun. 

Mycroft, who was very easy to ignore. 

He ran straight into the sea, not bothering to kick off his shoes, his trousers, his shirt. He whooped with glee as the first shock of icy saltwater against his skin, stood sputtering and laughing, the sun warm against chilled flesh. 

"Sherlock!" Mycroft again, out of breath, _of course_. 

He turned around in water up to his waist, took a half-step back towards the shore, regretting, now, that he'd not paused long enough to strip down to his swim trunks, his clothing dragging heavy and uncomfortable against his skin. 

Mycroft was cresting over the dune, coming towards him at a stumbling run, his face very red.

The wave broke over him from behind, pitching him forward and then sucking him backwards, sending him reeling, the entire world vanishing into swirling foam, cold and dark, senses reduced to a dull roar. His chin cracked against the ground, his sword plucked from his hand as if by invisible fingers. He struggled for solid ground and found nothing but water, his clothes no longer just uncomfortable but strangling, his shoes leaden weights pulling him down, down, down. 

He flailed his arms as another wave crashed overhead, swirling currents yanking at him, sending him somersaulting over and over, bits of sand and sediment sharp against his skin. He had lost track of which way was up. His eyes burned and he shut them, thumping along the seafloor as the tide took him. 

Something had a hold of his hair, a bright shock of pain and he kicked and struggled even as he was dragged upwards, his head breaking the surface into sunlight, tears streaming from stinging eyes. He was hauled backwards through the water and up onto the sand, skin raw and tingling, and as he coughed and flailed his eyes found Mycroft, Mycroft who had him by the hair, Mycroft who was red-faced and terrified and soaking wet, mouth open and gaping like a fish. 

"Stupid, Sherlock, so stupid," Mycroft was babbling. "You never turn your back on the sea, not ever, don't you know that? What kind of pirate _are_ you?" 

*

Sherlock woke. 

It was early, yet, judging by the angle of the light through the window and the relative lack of noise from the street below. 

His eyes felt odd. Damp, stinging. As if he'd been rubbing at them. 

He went out to the sitting room in his dressing gown and pyjamas. Booted his laptop, stared at the unread email in his inbox from Gloria Trevor. 

He did not open it. He did not delete it. 

He shut his laptop. 

Mrs Hudson had left a fresh pot of tea on the kitchen table. It was still hot. She seemed able to predict the time of his waking with unerring accuracy. One of her many gifts.

She had set folded newspaper next to the pot on the tray. He flipped it open as he took his first sip, noted the headline. Rolled his eyes. Fetched his phone to text Lestrade. 

_You've arrested an innocent man. It was the neighbor. SH_

He deleted the (doubtless outraged) reply. Lestrade could certainly put the rest of the pieces together himself.

Well…

He picked up his phone again.

 _Try checking the back garden for the murder weapon. SH_

There. Surely that was enough to be going on with.

Lestrade had come crashing through the trees at Musgrave Hall, torch held in front of him like a beacon. He'd looked a bit wild-eyed, panicked. Entirely unprepared to be the savior, the rescuer. 

The sight of him had been so wholly unexpected that it had taken Sherlock until he'd been bundled up alongside John in the back of a car to realize that Mycroft must have phoned him, must have dispatched him specifically. That Mycroft, unable to be there himself, had wanted someone entirely sympathetic to Sherlock to be the first person on the scene. 

There was an uglier implication beneath the surface. The possibility—the _probability_ \--that Mycroft had anticipated that Sherlock would need to take drastic action. That the only way out of their situation would be to kill his sister. That whoever appeared first on the scene might find a mess, might misunderstand, might consider Sherlock a threat. That Mycroft would not be present, this time, to order anyone to stand down.

Lestrade did not have security clearance. Regardless, he had been briefed on Magnussen. He'd been deemed trustworthy, a member of Sherlock's own inner circle. And, clearly, that trust came attached to strings. Strings that could be tugged at will. 

He'd been dispatched on Sherlock's behalf before, after all. A weekend out on Dartmoor under the guise of a holiday. 

Irritating. Invasive. Wholly unnecessary.

And yet.

He had been _relieved_ that the worried face crashing out of the brush had been familiar, the face of a friend. Relieved that he hadn't needed to pretend, that he hadn't needed to explain to a perfect stranger who he was and what had happened, what he needed. Lestrade had been there, and he had understood, and he had _handled it._

He finished his tea. 

*

Mycroft had sent a car to take him to the airfield, as he'd gotten into the habit of doing. 

He left it waiting for ten minutes longer than he actually needed to, as he did every time. 

He packed up his violin, went downstairs. Locked the door, deliberately tweaked the knocker so it hung askew. 

He was surprised, upon sliding into the back seat, to find his brother waiting for him. 

"I'll spare you the lecture on punctuality," Mycroft sniffed.

"What are you doing here?" 

"I thought I'd join you today." 

Sherlock frowned. It was not entirely unprecedented; Mycroft had accompanied him to Sherrinford a handful of times over the past several months. Usually at the behest of their parents. 

But to go willingly and, seemingly, spontaneously? Unusual. Mycroft detested prisons, the very idea of incarceration discomfited him. A fact that had come to light, rather glaringly, during their incident with Eurus. He'd taken note, but had elected not to exploit it, at least for the time being. 

"What's wrong, who's dying?" he asked, instead. 

Mycroft raised his brows, gave him a thin smile. "Nothing and no one, I assure you. I simply thought you might like some company." 

"Please. When have I ever liked your company?" 

Pursed lips, a disapproving stare that lasted just a beat too long. Acknowledgement of their perpetual verbal dance. It was the closest that Mycroft would get to a smile. 

The car pulled out into traffic. 

Sherlock looked down at his phone. 

The leather seat creaked as Mycroft shifted. "Well, go on then." 

Sherlock looked up. "Hm? Go on with what?"

"I know you have photographs." 

"I have no idea what you're talking about." 

"As if you're not positively _bursting_ to show off." 

"Bursting? Clearly the nicotine withdrawal has gone to your head—how many days has it been now? Seven? It's glaringly obvious that you've turned to sweets to fill the void, by the way, did you know—"

"Sherlock, if this little rant is meant to distract me from the fact that you've got _gigabytes_ worth of baby photos squirreled away on your phone, you're rather losing your touch. I'll not ask again—I assure you, my interest in the subject is strictly down to politeness." 

They stared at each other. 

Sherlock huffed, handed over his phone. Mycroft swiped dutifully through the pictures, affected an air of supreme boredom. 

He passed the phone back as the car approached the tarmac. "Seems to be progressing on target through all of the appropriate growth and development milestones." 

"Mm," Sherlock agreed. 

They walked together towards the helicopter, weak April sunlight peeking out from behind the cloud cover. 

"You thought I killed her," Sherlock said, once the helicopter had lifted into the air. 

Mycroft squinted at him, adjusted his headphones. "What?" 

"Eurus. You thought I killed her. That's why you sent Lestrade for me that night." 

Mycroft was silent. He stared out the window for some time as London fell away behind them. 

"It's what I would have done," he said, finally. 

Sherlock leaned back in his seat, surprised. He looked down at his hands, at the violin case tucked carefully between his knees. 

*

Mycroft hung back as they went down the long hallway. 

Sherlock stopped, turned, looked at him. "Aren't you coming?" 

He tugged at his tie, shifted where he stood. "Perhaps not." 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, studied him, searched for what he'd missed.

"Don't," Mycroft said.

"Oh," Sherlock said, realization breaking over him like a shock of cold water. He took a step backwards, involuntary. _Control yourself,_ he rebuked immediately. He could not afford to let his guard slip, not here. 

"Sherlock—" Mycroft said. 

"I should have suspected earlier," Sherlock said, annoyed with himself. "My mind was—elsewhere." 

"I'm not going in," Mycroft said, conciliatory, quiet. "Doesn't that count for something?" 

Sherlock looked at him, read all of the things he'd missed on their journey. Did not speak the unpleasant truth: that Mycroft had only deigned to accompany him because he'd heard that Eurus had spoken the last time Sherlock had come, that perhaps she wasn't entirely beyond reach after all, that perhaps he could, once again, make controlled use of her intellect. All for the greater good, of course.

"It was foolish to even consider," Mycroft said. 

"It's like you've learned nothing," Sherlock said. He turned away, went through the doors alone. 

*

Eurus was already playing when he approached the glass. Her back was to him, her long hair hanging loose. 

He did not speak, merely busied himself unpacking his violin, gently tuning. 

The piece she played was unfamiliar to him, haunting. Her own composition, most likely. He listened for a time, acclimated himself, and when it seemed appropriate, lifted his violin to his shoulder and joined in. 

His mind wandered as he played. 

_Oh,_ John had said, his first sound in hours, sitting bolt upright in the back of the car that had taken them back into London. He'd been given a pair of dry scrubs at the hospital where they'd both been checked over, but he'd still had a bedraggled, waterlogged look about him. _Sherlock, you—you can't go back to Baker Street. There's nowhere for you to—_

The flat had been roped off, of course. Uninhabitable, the most basic of repairs unable to be so much as scheduled until a moronic list of so-called professionals had inspected the premises and been satisfied that the building remained structurally sound. 

_Come back with me,_ John had said, his voice soft. _You can--_

 _No,_ Sherlock had said. The very idea of it had made his skin crawl. He'd barely been able to stand being in John's house even when Mary was alive. Now, after—after everything that had happened—he doubted he'd even be able to bring himself to sit down, let alone sleep. Too many ghosts.

John had not pushed the issue. The car had dropped him off first, the faint rays of morning sun just beginning to brighten the horizon. Sherlock had watched through the window as he'd knocked on a neighbor's door, retrieved Rosie from a rather bleary-eyed and indignant looking woman in pyjamas. 

He'd hugged his daughter close, eyes closed, while she'd yawned and patted at his cheeks with chubby fingers. 

Sherlock had watched for as long as he could stand, and had then given the driver Mycroft's address.

He hadn't needed to knock. Mycroft had opened the door as if he'd been expecting him. 

Eurus's violin soared, beautiful, melancholy, rising up and trailing off, one lonely, shivering note hanging between them. 

He was surprised to find himself slightly breathless. It had been a challenging piece.

She set her violin down, turned to face him. She was smiling, a small smile, tentative. 

He nodded, offered a small smile in return. Waited. 

They did not speak today. That was all right with him. 

*

The car stopped in front of Baker Street, and Mycroft put out his gloved hand, stopped him as he moved for the door. 

He was holding something, a disc in a white paper sleeve. 

Sherlock's mouth went dry. He stared. 

"I debated," Mycroft said. He tapped the sleeve against his knee for a moment, lips pursed. Then he held it out, an offering. 

Sherlock took it. There was nothing written on the smooth surface. 

"You are right to be angry with me," Mycroft said. "I have inadvertently caused you a good deal of suffering. It was not my intention." He cleared his throat. "I never wanted a sibling, you know."

Sherlock heaved a sigh, leaned back against the leather seat. "Clearly." 

"No, you misunderstand me," Mycroft said. "I was seven years old when you arrived on the scene. I'd had seven years to myself. I was not particularly keen for that to change." 

"Not keen to share your pudding, you mean." 

"Certainly not," Mycroft said, and there was a hint of surprising humour in his tone. "Your very existence seemed superfluous. I had already been assured that I was remarkable. Why, then, would they want another?" 

Sherlock made a derisive noise, glanced towards the door to Baker Street. The knocker had been shifted, ever-so-slightly. It could have been Mrs Hudson, or a client, of course, but—

"Mummy seemed to feel that I was lonely," Mycroft said. He made a noise, a strangled sound halfway between a dismissive snort and a chuckle containing genuine warmth. "And when I assured her that I was not, and that she did not need to make up for any perceived inadequacy by providing me with a brother, she made me promise to look out for you." 

Sherlock looked away from the door, took in his brother's subdued demeanor, his tense shoulders, his face, pinched and drawn. This was not an easy subject. 

"She asked me to promise, and I did. Promise. I promised that I would always look out for you, that I would protect you, that I would shield you from harm. And, to be entirely honest, I did not find it nearly as distasteful as I thought I would. I—well. I rather embraced my task, if you must know." 

"Charming," Sherlock said, looking away again. He was growing increasingly certain that the particular positioning of the knocker meant that John had stopped by at some point. Was he still there? Or had they simply missed one another, ships passing within arm's length on a foggy night? 

"I took to the role of big brother so well, in fact, that it rather slipped Mummy's mind to extract the same promise from me when Eurus was born." 

He returned his full attention to his brother, who was sitting stiffly, hands folded on his lap. 

"What, exactly, are you implying?" 

"Nothing," Mycroft said. "I am implying nothing. I am stating a fact. Eurus was the way that she was. She frightened me. And I—from the time she was born, Sherlock, I treated her as an interloper, as a threat. I attempted to shield you from her, instead of looking out for you both. And, perhaps growing maudlin is simply a sign of encroaching middle age, but in retrospect I cannot help but fear that my actions had precisely the opposite effect than what was intended." 

Troubled, Sherlock looked down at the disc in his hand. 

"I don't know what you expect me to say to that." 

Mycroft smiled, a thin press of his lips. He raised his brows. "I'll see you next week. Same time." 

Sherlock got out of the car, stood on the kerb as it drove away. 

*

The flat was alive with Rosie, her enthusiastic babble drifting down the stairs to where he stood in the entranceway, peeling off his coat. 

He took the stairs two at a time, paused just long enough to compose his face into a more respectable expression before going in. 

John was in the kitchen, something bubbling on the stovetop. Rosie stood in her little playpen, gripping onto the edge with sturdy fingers. She bounced up and down at the sight of Sherlock, grinning. 

He gave her a wink, went past her to carefully set his violin case down under the window. Placed the disc in its little paper slip on the desk.

"Hello," John said, coming into the sitting room. He smiled, uncertain, faltering. "I'm making dinner. Sorry. I—ha. I probably should have called first." 

Words piled up in the back of Sherlock's throat, emphatic denials, impassioned pleas. He said none of them. Instead he went to the playpen, scooped up Rosie. It was considered appropriate to make strange faces at children. She would find nothing amiss in his contorted expression. 

She pointed to the mantel and he walked her over to it, averted his eyes as she gazed at their reflections in the mirror. 

"How was it?" John asked, coming up behind him, settling down into his chair. 

Sherlock cleared his throat.

"Sorry," John said, again. "You probably don't want—"

"It was fine," Sherlock said, and he was pleased at how steady his voice came out. A little flat, easily mistaken for boredom. 

Rosie reached for the bat in its little case and he picked it up, let her smear sticky fingerprints all over the glass. He watched as her little face scrunched up, intent. Focusing on her meant he didn't have to look at it, didn't have to register and note all of the ways that it was the same, all of the ways that it was different. 

"Ba!" she announced, and grinned. 

He smiled at her. "Vampire bat, yes. Very good, Watson, although we'll have to work on your pronunciation." 

"Ba," she said again, decisive. She handed the case back to him. 

He set the bat back down on the mantel, moved on, let her interest lead them both on their circuit around the room. 

"This doesn't bore you?" John asked. There was something strained in his voice. 

Sherlock glanced over at him, surprised. "Bore me?" 

"She wants to do the same thing every time she comes here. You walk her around the room, she picks up the same things and puts them down." 

"Curiosity should always be encouraged," Sherlock said. Then he reconsidered. "Well. _Always_ is something of a broad term and likely includes an entire host of potentially dangerous situations that, in the interest of caution, should probably be avoided at this time. Perhaps I should amend my statement to reflect the belief that curiosity should _usually_ be encouraged—" 

"Sherlock," John said, and now he was laughing, seemingly in spite of himself, shaking his head a little bit. 

"Hm?" 

"I just—I guess I just never pictured it. You, like this." 

"Like this?"

"Patient." 

He swallowed, looked away. Rosie made a frustrated noise and pointed towards the bookcase, and he slid sideways so she could run her hands along the spines of the nearest row of books. 

He had been patient for years, for eons, for eternities. He had been nothing but patient, even when it strangled him, dragged him under, drowned hm. 

He could not say that, not to John. Not out loud, not ever. 

He carried Rosie past the window, and as they brushed past his desk she grabbed at the disc in its paper sleeve, waved it triumphantly in one small fist. 

"No," he said, gently tried to extract it from her stubborn grip. "Not that." 

"What's that?" John asked. "Case?" 

He was frowning at the sight of it, that white paper sleeve, the disc within. Sherlock couldn't blame him. 

"I don't know," he said, finally succeeding in prising it from Rosie's grasp. "It's from Mycroft." He set it back down on the desk, absently handed Rosie a femur to distract her from the indignant wail building up at being denied. 

John made a noise that might have been a laugh, stood up, moved so he was very close, eye-to-eye with his daughter. "Do not," he said. "Put that in your mouth. Are we understood?" 

Rosie grinned, and moved to do just that.

"And that's quite enough of that," John said, definitely chuckling, although it was a horrified sort of laugh. He plucked Rosie from Sherlock's arms, handed the femur back over. Went towards the kitchen to check on whatever was on the stove. 

Sherlock set the bone down on the desk next to his laptop, thought about the unread email from Gloria Trevor. Thought about Victor's bones, down in the dark, and could not quite suppress a shudder. 

He glanced surreptitiously towards the kitchen to see if he'd been caught out, but John was stirring the pot, mumbling something against Rosie's soft fair head as he did so. She was snugged up against him, gazing with rapt, adoring eyes. 

John had looked up at him, wide eyes caught in torchlight, head and shoulders barely above water. Alive, still breathing, down in the dark where Victor had died.

*

They stayed later than usual, John lingering long after Rosie had fallen asleep, her pouted mouth drooping open, one fist thrown up over her head, her breaths deep and even. 

Sherlock sat in his chair and looked at John sitting in the chair that was not his but looked very much like it. He'd had his own cleaned and reupholstered, but John's had been a lost cause. 

They'd lit a fire, even though it was edging on too warm. It had cast a golden glow on the room, threw pleasing shadows against the walls. 

"Do you want to watch it?" John asked him, once Rosie had dropped off. He cast a meaningful look at the disc in its plain paper sleeve. 

What he meant, of course, was: do you want to watch it _together._

Sherlock hesitated. 

He was fairly sure that, if pressed, he'd do anything, anything, to keep John by his side. For however long he was willing to stay. 

He was also fairly sure that whatever was on that DVD, it wasn't something John would want to see. 

He felt oddly trapped, cornered, ill at ease. For a brief, wild moment, he considered picking a fight, something to get John good and riled up and send him storming out in a fit of frustration. But that would mean stirring the heavy golden silence that had fallen between them, would mean startling Rosie and turning her sweet gentle snores into miserable sobs, would leave him once again pacing an empty flat counting all of the things that weren't right. 

So he stood, picked up the disc. Turned it over in his hands for a moment. Looked at John. 

John joined him on the sofa, laptop propped up on the coffee table. They sat very close, arms just brushing, leaning forward to see the screen. 

A picture flickered to life. 

Surveillance footage, static overhead angle. Black and white. 

Two men sprawled on the floor, one standing. 

He recognized John before cottoning on to the fact that _he_ was the other crumpled form, that there was an unfired gun lying next to his curled fingers. That the man left standing between them, with his eyes shut and his fists clenched, was Mycroft. 

"Ah," he said, his throat dry. "I suppose we're about to find out how we got from Point A to Point B." 

John did not smile, did not laugh. His face had scrunched up slightly, the way it did when he was very angry and fighting hard not to let it show. His nostrils flared. 

The doors opened. A guard stepped inside, dark clothes, knit cap. Rifle in hand. 

"Be reasonable," Mycroft said to him. 

Eurus trailed behind the guard, her movements quick and sure. She stopped, tilted her head up, smiled at Mycroft. "No. I don't think I will." 

They stood regarding each other. Mycroft pulled at his tie, smoothed at his suit jacket. Dropped into a crouch and picked up the gun that Sherlock had dropped. 

"Oh," Eurus said. She folded her hands in front of her, very calm, almost prim. "I really don't think so, do you?" 

She nodded at the guard, who pressed the muzzle up against Sherlock's slack cheek. 

Sherlock _felt_ John tense up, there next to him on the sofa, his entire frame gone rigid and trembling. He blew out a sharp breath through his nose. 

On the screen, Mycroft shrugged, stiff practiced indifference. "Either way, this all ends with you." 

"Funny," she said.

"What is?" 

"You were unwilling to shoot the Governor." 

"He was an innocent man." 

"Was he? Innocent?" She tilted her head, stared intently at him. "Innocent of what, exactly? How do you define innocence and guilt? It seems an arbitrary concept." 

Mycroft did not answer. The guard kept the muzzle of his rifle pressed right up against Sherlock's cheek.

Sherlock worked his jaw, tried to remember if he'd had any residual soreness. He'd gone into the experience feeling somewhat like all of his joints had been replaced with shattered glass, so it was difficult to say. 

"Oh, I see," Eurus said. 

"What do you see?" 

"You define innocence as it relates to yourself. The Governor was innocent because he hadn't done anything to _you_. Or, at the very least, nothing you deemed unforgivable. I, on the other hand—" 

"Have held me against my will. Under threat of violence." 

"One could apply the same context to my situation. Have you not held me against my will for years?" 

He shut his eyes. "That is hardly the same—" 

"Isn't it?" she turned, gestured around. "Locked rooms, armed enforcers. Strict protocols." 

"It hasn't made much of a difference, in the end, has it?" 

"Impossible to say without delving into hypotheticals." 

"You won't kill him," Mycroft said, shifting his attention back to Sherlock. 

The guard gave him another sharp prod with the rifle. 

"For Christ's sake," John hissed, still coiled up like a spring where he sat. His hands had clenched up into fists. 

"You don't sound very certain of that," Eurus said. 

"You won't," Mycroft said again. "You've gone through too much trouble setting this up just to shoot an unconscious man on the floor." 

"You do have a point," she said. She tipped her head. The guard lifted his rifle away from Sherlock's face.

Mycroft pulled the trigger. 

On the sofa, Sherlock twitched as if he'd been the one shot. John looked over at him, alarmed, and something in his face loosened. He unclenched one of his fists, put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, squeezed. His palm was very warm, almost hot through the thin fabric of his shirt. 

Eurus had not moved. Eurus had not so much as flinched. 

"Oh," she said. She was smiling again. "That was interesting. It was a blank, of course. There was only one actual live round in the weapon. You were right—far too much trouble to end the game early." 

Mycroft looked as rattled as Sherlock had ever seen him. He dropped the gun. "Well. I had to try." 

"Interesting, the lengths you'll go to justify your own actions." 

She clapped her hands, and through the doors came orderlies, white-coated, pushing stretchers. They moved quickly, efficiently, bundling first John and then Sherlock up from the floor, strapping them down, wheeling them away. 

"Where are you taking them?" 

"Home," Eurus said.

"And me?" 

"Not going home." 

"I see." 

Neither moved. 

"You thought he was going to shoot you," Eurus said. 

"Yes."

"And yet you didn't think he was going to shoot himself." 

John's hand tightened on Sherlock's shoulder, a sharp involuntary flex. He lifted it away, cleared his throat. 

"No," Mycroft said.

"Why? He gave every indication of doing so." 

"No. He took a calculated risk. Given the lengths you'd gone thus far to ensure his participation in your little game, he clearly believed that you'd terminate the experiment rather than see him dead. I agreed with his assessment of the scenario." 

"Hence why you made no move to stop him."

"You don't ascribe a selfish motive to my behavior? He'd been moments away from shooting me in the heart, after all." 

"Something you demonstrated a clear willingness to endure, for his sake. Big brother to the rescue, one last time." 

"Oh," Mycroft said, his voice bored. "Is this where you berate me for not doing the same for you?"

"Do you feel that the protection you offered him was adequate?" 

"I don't know what you mean." 

"Do you feel, that by shielding him from certain aspects of his past, that you have helped Sherlock? Is it not always better to have context for one's actions?" 

"Oh, is _that_ what all of this has been about?" 

"I've been very curious about him for a very long time." 

"I've seen what you do to things you're curious about." 

"Incarceration makes you uncomfortable." 

"What was your first clue?" Boredom again, feigned. Mycroft clearly _was_ uncomfortable. 

"It's the worst fate you can imagine for yourself," she said. "All of your power, your control, stripped away. You left to the mercy of others with far inferior minds—" 

"Yes, thank you, you paint a vivid picture." 

"Good," she said. "Because you'll be staying here. If you behave yourself, maybe I'll bring you a treat for Christmas." 

She looked up at the camera, smiled.

The picture cut out, left them in a sort of hollow silence. 

The fire snapped, popped. Still golden, still warm and soothing. Rosie slumbered on, oblivious, peaceful. 

"Jesus," John said. "Just when I thought it couldn't—just— _Jesus._ "

Sherlock shut his eyes, breathed. 

Mycroft had pulled the trigger. Mycroft had not hesitated. He had pointed the gun at Eurus and had pulled the trigger the moment he saw an opportunity. 

_It's what I would have done,_ Mycroft had said in the helicopter. He had not been speaking hypothetically. 

"Are you all right?" John asked him, his voice very low, very close to Sherlock's ear. He realized belatedly that it was likely to keep from waking Rosie, but that did not stop the gooseflesh from prickling up all down his arms. He shivered, and managed to keep himself from melting against John, but only just. 

"I—" he said, and he realized he had no idea how to answer that. 

"Is she like that, all the time?" John asked. His face was pained. "When you go there. Is that what—is that what it's like?" 

He thought he understood what John was really asking him, halting and hesitant. _Do you go there to be tortured? Flayed open and pinned, exposed like some kind of laboratory specimen? Do you go there to be punished?_

"No," Sherlock said, grateful to have landed on something he could answer. "No, it's—not like that at all. We don't speak much. We play." 

"Play." 

"Music, John," Sherlock said, and the edges of his lips curled up into a tired smile. "We play music."


	3. Waves

*

They walked together down a small footpath at the back of the house, overgrown weeds snagging and tugging at the hem of his coat. The air was cool and clear and damp, alive with the sounds of the night. 

The path twisted and turned as they walked, the stars above blotted out by a dense thicket of trees. There was a small car parked up on the grass, out of sight from the house. 

He glanced at Eurus. She looked steadily back at him. 

He opened the door, slid behind the wheel. The interior was neat, devoid of character. An air freshener hung from the rear view mirror, giving off a chemical pine scent. Cloth seats, threadbare. There was an oily smudge on the passenger-side window. It was just the right height for John's forehead, pressed against the glass as he slumped unconscious in his seat. 

He swallowed, looked away. The keys were in the ignition, dangling, cold to the touch. He started the engine. 

Eurus slid into the passenger seat beside him, silent as a ghost. 

She had not done this alone. She had not carried them, had not flown them from Sherrinford, had not arranged him in a dark box of his own memories without assistance of some kind. Someone had helped her. Someone had put John into this car, had driven him off into the dark. 

Paid or coerced? Or a willing volunteer? 

"Where?" he asked. 

She pointed. He drove.

The car bounced over bumpy, barely-there road. Stones rattled against the chassis, kicked up by the tyres.

They continued in silence for several minutes. The trees around them loomed dark and treacherous.

They had roamed, as children. They had been wild, in a way. Indulged. He had not been held back, given free rein to explore the boundaries of his curiosity. It was not inconceivable to think that any one of them might have strayed far from home. 

Eurus had been five years old. This would have been a challenging journey on foot. Not impossible, surely not impossible. But difficult. To the extreme.

"Stop," she said. 

He stopped. Turned to look at her.

She nodded. "Here." 

He clambered back out into the cold night air, pocketed the keys. Just in case. 

"John!" he shouted. 

Something winged flapped off into the shadows. 

He looked back at the car. Eurus was still and silent in the passenger seat, knees pulled up under her chin. Her gaze was distant.

He tore his eyes away, scanned the ground, squinting to make out detail in the dark. There—grass flattened by a heavy tread. Snapped twigs, felled branches. A disturbed path where a body had been dragged through thick brush. 

"JOHN!" he tried again.

He struck off into the tall grass, following the trail. The car disappeared behind him, swallowed up by the night. He lifted his lantern, skimmed the faint light over the ground, searched for signs. Walked.

He came out from under the thick canopy of trees, hesitated at a dip in the path. Overhead, the moon shone. 

There was a sound—faint—unmistakable. Water. 

He broke into a run, watching the ground, skidding to a halt as it dropped away to inky darkness before him.

The well's upper structure had long since crumbled. It was little more than a gaping hole in the earth, moonlight gleaming weakly off of rippling water far below.

The ground all around was soft, muddy, freshly disturbed. Someone had recently laid piping. 

Paid, coerced, or volunteer?

There, a dark shape in the water, still faintly moving.

"John," Sherlock breathed, relief crashing over him. 

There was a rope, tied off against a nearby tree. It was rough in his hands, the ends still damp and crimped. Someone had clearly used it to lower John down. He hadn't been pushed, hadn't been battered and dashed against rock. He'd been dropped with care. 

She'd wanted him alive. 

Alive to be found? Or alive to suffer as he drowned?

"Heads up," he shouted, tossing the end down towards John. Something in his stomach twisted as John's hands flashed pale in the moonlight below, grasping for it. John hauled himself upward, using the rope as leverage, his head and shoulders lifting above the waterline. 

"Sh—Sherlock." John's teeth were chattering. But his voice was strong. "I'm chained." 

"I know," Sherlock said, shutting his eyes. Stupid. _Stupid._ He'd brought nothing with him. "I—" 

A whispering behind him, tall grass in the breeze. He had left Eurus behind in the car, quiet and huddled. Had she remained there? Or had she trailed, ghostlike, in his wake? 

There was no way to be sure. 

And while it certainly seemed that the malice had gone out of her, he was not quite ready to bet his life on it. Or John's. Especially not John's. 

_Never turn your back on the sea._

Mycroft had told him that, once. Hadn't he? 

The sea was capricious. Brilliant and beautiful and, above all, dangerous. Never to be entirely trusted, no matter how calm. 

He glanced over his shoulder, saw nothing but dancing grass and dark gnarled trees. 

Still. Best to be cautious.

He dropped into a crouch, carefully lowered himself flat against the ground, on his stomach in the grass. He wormed his way towards the edge of the well so he could peer over without presenting a tempting target. 

"Are you all right?" he called down.

John. John was there, his face pale and grim. His hair was plastered down against his head, his lips pressed together in a tight line, his hands wrapped around the rope. He nodded, a sharp, controlled movement. Still the soldier. Vigilant, wary. Not yet clear of danger. 

There was no easy fix to their present situation. 

He, in his flood of panic and confusion, had failed to plan for every contingency. He had been so focused on _getting to John_ , that he'd neglected to account for what he'd do when he found him.

_You try to repress your emotions to refine your reasoning._

There had been nothing refined about his reasoning here. 

He did not have the tools at hand to free John. It would necessitate either going back up to the house to look for something that could cut through chain, or coaxing Eurus into revealing the location of the key. 

"John," he called down. 

John met his gaze. He shivered, clutched on to the rope. 

"I have to—" Sherlock hesitated. "John. I'm going to have to leave. There's nothing here I can use to get you out. I'll be back as soon as I can. You—just hold on." 

"Where is she?" John's voice was grim. His jaw clenched against chattering teeth. 

"Not a threat," he hedged, and hoped he spoke the truth. 

"Go," John said. "Hurry." 

"Will you be all right?" 

John laughed, the sound sharp and humourless. "Not much of a choice, yeah?"

Still, he hesitated. Stared down, not quite able to pull himself away.

This was the place where his friend had died. 

"Sherlock, unless you're planning on joining me down here, you should probably—" 

"Bad idea," Sherlock said, as if a part of him didn't want to do just that. Which was ridiculous. "My lock-picking skills may be superlative, but I've not attempted to work underwater—an unforgivable oversight, I'll grant you—and at the moment I lack the necessary tools for the job. Not so much as a paperclip at hand." 

_Also, while it's not likely, there still remains a greater than zero percent chance that my sister might not be able to resist cutting the rope and leaving us both to die down there._

It was, he thought, a sign of great emotional maturity that he opted not to say that last part out loud. 

He tried smiling instead. Which, in retrospect, was probably a mistake.

"Sherlock," John said, and it sounded like there was a faint thread of exasperated mirth somewhere in his trembling voice. Which was remarkable, but which was also very much like John. "Go." 

He stood up, stepped back, reluctant. And then he paused, cocked his head, listened. 

"Sherlock—" John said again. 

"Shut up." 

"Sherlock, seriously—" 

"Shut up," he said again. "Listen." 

The sound grew louder, stronger, the steady beat of propellers. A searchlight crested over the trees, catching him in its sweeping beam. He waved his arms. 

"Is that a helicopter?" John shouted.

"Well-observed." 

"I'm down a sodding well, you arse!" 

The rush of relief left him lightheaded, reeling. Laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep in his chest, inappropriate, inescapable. He looked down, caught John's eye, and John—freezing, shivering, miserable John—he threw back his head and started giggling too. 

*

A security team had found Alex Garrideb on the beach on their second sweep of the island. He'd been huddled, shivering, against jagged rocks, his hands still bound.

He was treated for his injuries, then formally arrested and taken into custody for the murder of James Evans. 

He had not, Sherlock was told, struggled or put up any kind of protest, nor made any token effort to clear his name. The only words he had spoken, as he was being escorted from Sherrinford, were to inquire about his brothers. 

Nathan Garrideb's body was recovered three weeks later, by a fishing boat some distance from the island. Howard's remains had, to date, not been found. 

The tides surrounding Sherrinford's grim island were notoriously vicious, after all. 

The news of his eventual sentencing was received with little fanfare, just a small blurb in the papers. It had been an uninteresting crime by an uninteresting man with an uninteresting motive. 

"Do you think we should talk to him?" John asked.

Sherlock had come out of his bedroom to find John lingering over the kitchen table, dressed for work. He was flipping through the newspaper while he helped himself to a scone from Mrs Hudson's tea tray. A quick glance confirmed that she'd brought up extra this morning. Almost as if she'd known he might be stopping by. 

"Rosie's with the sitter," John said, mouth half full. 

"Obviously," Sherlock said, blinking. John with the paper in the mornings, John alone at the table, eating quickly before rushing off to work. Cluttered flat, smiley face on the wall—no. _No._ The smiley face was wrong-not-wrong-different and he had not just woken to find himself in the rose-tinted past.

He was here, in the present, and John was speaking. John didn't live at Baker Street, John still lived across town in the house he'd once shared with Mary and he'd hired a sitter to help with Rosie three days a week so he could take his shifts at the surgery. John had woken up this morning and had elected to leave for work approximately forty-five minutes earlier than necessary in order to stop by Baker Street and filch a bit of Sherlock's breakfast. John was here now in the only capacity he'd ever be here again—as a guest. And John had asked him something. 

He inhaled sharply, caught up with his senses. "Talk to who?" 

"Alex Garrideb."

John tapped his finger on the newspaper, and Sherlock craned his neck to read the small print. 

"Why?" 

John could not seem to find an answer for that. Likely because there was no good reason to be had for speaking with Alex Garrideb, other than as a means to assuage misplaced guilt. 

But John was also giving him one of those looks, one of those looks that said he was missing something, that he'd failed yet again at grasping some small but vitally important nuance of human interaction. 

It rankled, that look.

He did not care about Alex Garrideb. He'd had no desire to serve as the man's judge, jury and executioner, of course, and the fate of his brothers was exceedingly unfortunate, but the man _had_ committed murder. He'd been caught out, and was now being suitably handled. There was nothing to be gained by visiting him. Nothing to be learned, nothing to be done. 

Sitting across a table from Alex Garrideb would not stop Sherlock from thinking about the look on his face as he'd met his gaze through a pane of glass and issued his condemnation. 

"I am not responsible for what happened to his brothers," Sherlock said, sharper than he'd intended. He glanced up, realized too late that he'd disappeared into his own head again, that he'd let silence linger in the conversation for far longer than was appropriate and had startled John with a poorly timed response. 

John, who had finished his tea and scone, who had rinsed and put away his plate and mug. John, who had his coat on. John, who was halfway out the door, who was looking at him with an expression caught halfway between surprise and regret.

"You were—" John made a vague waving gesture by his head by means of explanation, and Sherlock nodded. 

He turned around and went into the sitting room, expecting to hear the door shut behind John. 

"Sherlock," John said instead. 

He sat down in his chair, smoothed his face into something resembling a patient, expectant expression. Waited.

John looked tremendously uncomfortable. "I know that—Christ—I wasn't trying to imply anything like that. That's not at all what I—" 

"There was nothing I could have done," Sherlock said, and _why were they still talking?_ Why had John not gone out the door and down the stairs and out onto the street as he'd clearly been intending? 

"I know," John said. 

"He made choices that put himself into that position," Sherlock said. "He killed a man in cold blood for financial gain. And—I'll grant you that there really was no way he could have foreseen the specific circumstances surrounding his discovery, but—" 

"Sherlock—"

"But it was his choices that put him there and it was Eurus who pushed the button and _I did not kill them!_ " 

His face was hot. A bead of sweat rolled down his back, chilled between his shoulder blades. He was trembling, he realized, all over. He lifted his hands, looked at them shaking. They had shaken, badly, while he'd been high. He was not high right now.

"Sherlock," John said again, and he had shut the door, he was taking off his coat again, approaching Sherlock's chair. There was concern written in the lines of his face. 

"You're going to be late for work," Sherlock said. 

John crouched down in front of him, hands on his shoulders, peering into his eyes. 

"For God's sake, I'm not taking anything." 

"I didn't think—" John rocked backwards a bit, shook his head. His face was pinched. 

"Why not? It's a perfectly reasonable assumption." 

"No," John said. He shook his head, a short, sharp motion. Decisive. 

"Shall I remind you of my history, and the statistics surrounding relapse within—" 

"I know you're not high," John said. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

He did not offer up any detail on _how,_ how he could be so certain of such a thing. Sherlock was fairly sure that he had never done anything, ever in his life, to warrant such certainty. And yet.

"Right," Sherlock said. He swallowed. "Glad we've cleared that up. You were in the midst of suggesting that I go and see Alex Garrideb?"

"I was in the midst of suggesting that _we_ go and see Alex Garrideb, yeah." 

"And I asked you _why,_ " Sherlock hissed, annoyed at the way his hands trembled, at the way his skin came over hot and cold all at once, at the way his entire body threatened to shake itself apart for no reason, no good reason at all. "I can only assume it's because you mean for me to apologize to him, for the role I played in—" 

"No, Sherlock, no, God—" There was something wrong with John's voice. He wasn't rising to the bait, he wasn't getting angry, he wasn't doing any of the things that Sherlock expected him to do. 

Sherlock fell silent, folded his hands in his lap. If he clenched his fingers hard enough, the trembling became less obvious.

John had sat back on his heels, still crouched awkwardly on the floor. His face was very pale. 

"You were leaving for work," Sherlock tried again. 

"Yeah, no," John said, and he snorted out a laugh that had no humour behind it at all. "Not going anywhere right now." 

"It's been quite some time since I've needed to be minded." 

"I don't think you need to be minded, you arse, I think you need—" he stopped himself, looked away. He was breathing heavily. Upset. Very upset. 

"Go to work, John." 

"You didn't kill her," John said. He was staring down at the ground. After a moment he sucked in a quick breath and looked up. His gaze was steady. 

"We've had this conversation already," Sherlock said. His throat was dry. His voice emerged less firm than he would have liked. 

"I don't think we've had it enough, apparently." 

"There's no need to repeat—" 

"There damn well is," John said. He had curled his left hand into a fist, was grinding it absently into the floor. His eyes were bright. 

Sherlock found himself not quite able to look away. 

"I'm not—I shouldn't be. Surprised. That you don't believe me—" John laughed again, that same miserable unhappy sound. 

"You seem to have gone off topic. We were talking about Alex Garrideb," Sherlock attempted.

"No we weren't," John said.

_No,_ Sherlock realized, rather belatedly. _I suppose we weren't._

"Look," John said, and he cleared his throat. Winced a little bit. "I don't know how to—I'm not very good at this, yeah? And I said some terrible things—I _did_ some terrible things to you, and you didn't deserve—just—none of that was on you, all right? I never should have—I wasn't—" 

"John," Sherlock said, something in his chest wrenching, slipping. He was still trembling.

"I'm sorry, all right? Please. Just—Sherlock—" 

John's voice caught, he seemed to choke on his words. 

Sherlock shifted forward in his seat, uncertain, and John reached up and caught his shaking hands, pressed them close between his warm palms. 

"You do not need to apologize," John said, squeezing his hands. "To Alex Garrideb, or to me, or to anyone else. Yeah?" 

Molly had stood in the doorway of John and Mary's house, looking crumpled and small and sad, and had sent Sherlock away. She'd passed him a slip of paper and he'd taken it, had unfolded it in the back of a cab and read John's words and had realized, then, that there would be no forgiveness, not ever, not for him. 

_You made a vow,_ John had hissed, pale-faced and shocked on the floor, Mary's blood seeping into his clothes and blue ripples dancing on his face. _You swore._

"Sherlock," John said, his voice quiet and close and concerned. 

_I killed his wife,_ his own confession, blood oozing hot down his face. He'd looked up and he'd met John's eyes and he'd known that he could put himself through as many hells as he wanted, but he was never going to earn back late night conversations and shared giggles in dark alleys. He was never going to have John by his side again. 

"Sherlock, are you—" John cut himself off, swore under his breath. "Hey. _Hey._ "

Sherlock blinked. John was still crouched in front of him, clasping his hands, grounding him. 

"You're doing that thing," John said, and his mouth did something that seemed to want to be a smile, but his eyes were sad. "The blinking and the, um, staring. I'm used to it, but. Still a bit creepy." 

He cleared his throat, his eyes skittering away, looking for safer territory to focus on. He found none. The flat was wrong. 

"Sherlock," John said, serious again, and Sherlock forced his gaze back to his face. "I never actually said—I'm the one who owes you an apology."

"Don't be ridiculous." 

"What's ridiculous is that it's taken me this long to say it. I'm _sorry,_ Sherlock. Me telling you—telling you that I don't blame you any more wasn't the same thing as telling you that I never should have blamed you in the first place. The way I behaved—" 

"You were grieving." 

"And most people lean on their friends when they're grieving, they don't put them in the hospital." 

"You are not most people," Sherlock said, looking away again, uncomfortable. John's hands were warm on his. 

John had held his gaze and had shouted laughter over the buffeting propellers that heralded their rescue. John had been halfway to drowned, freezing, frightened and hurt—and he had _laughed._ And it had been everything, it had been a balm for both long-forgotten aches and fresh wounds still raw, it had been a spark of light in oppressive gloom; the entire world and everything wrong with it had faded away, all else that remained coalescing into one perfect moment: laughing with John in the dark. 

No. John Watson was not most people. 

_Every night I close my eyes and I'm back at Musgrave Hall,_ he did not say. _I see it, over and over and over again. I find Eurus. I walk down the path. I find the well. You laugh. We get in the car. You go home. I don't know why this keeps happening._

He opened his mouth to speak, could not find the words. 

_It took us all day to walk there. I packed us snacks,_ Eurus had said, calm and still behind glass. It would have been a challenging journey. They must have gotten tired. They would have had to stop in the shade to rest. He wondered if Eurus had cut up apple slices and cheese the way that Mummy used to do for them, if she'd shared them with Victor while he laughed and made plans for what he'd do with his treasure. 

She would have had to make the long walk back on her own. 

Someone else had driven John down that same path, John unconscious in the passenger seat with his head against the windowglass, his forehead leaving a telltale smear for Sherlock to find.

And he'd found it. He had. He had driven through the dark, he had searched, he had _found John,_ so why did he keep reliving it again and again and again?

Why did he keep conflating past and present? Why could he not look around his flat, his wrong flat, his changed flat, and firmly ground himself in place and time?

"A case," John said. There was something decisive in his tone, overly so. 

Sherlock twitched at the sound of his voice, lifted his head. His brain felt sluggish, slow gears grinding together, struggling to turn. 

"What?" 

"A case, you need a case. What was the last one you took?" 

Sherlock opened his mouth.

"See, you need to think about it, which means it's been too long." 

John was still crouched on the ground, still gripping his hands. He was smiling, a forced smile, a little tight around the eyes. It was a desperate sort of smile, the kind that said neither-one-of-us-knows-where-to-go-from-here-so-let's-try-this. 

He nodded, hesitant as their eyes met, let go of Sherlock's hands. 

"I've been tweeting," Sherlock said, a little defensive.

"An actual case. Something that requires you to leave the flat," John said. He snapped his fingers, his eyes lighting up. "The Borgia Pearl." 

"No," Sherlock said. "Absolutely not. Boring. No." He yawned hugely, theatrically, turned his face away. "Falling asleep just thinking about it." 

"Think of it as an early Christmas gift for Greg." 

"Who?"

"Don't you start up with that again," John laughed, genuine, fond and strained all at once.

"We're nowhere near Christmas." 

"I did say early." 

Sherlock yawned again.

"Fine," John said, pushing back up to his feet. "Something else, then. Anything. Whatever you want. I'll beg off work. Think I feel a flu coming on." 

Reality broke over him in an icy wave.

He sat up straight in his chair, alert now, looking at John with clearer eyes. Whatever he saw on Sherlock's face caused John to take a startled half-step backwards.

John, who didn't live there anymore. John, who had inexplicably arrived that morning to filch a bite of breakfast and a cup of tea. John, who had been on his way out the door before Sherlock had done or said something that had made him change his mind. 

And it hadn't been a _good_ change of mind. He hadn't been lured in by anything particularly witty or interesting or alluring that Sherlock had said or done. He'd come back into the room not because he'd wanted to, but because he'd been concerned. Unhappy. Worried. 

"I don't need you to manufacture distractions for me," he said. 

There was a flicker of genuine hurt on John's face. 

"That is what you've been doing, isn't it?" Now that the thought had occurred, he was unable to stop himself. "Doing the shopping. Cooking dinner. Popping in." 

"Sherlock," John said. He did not deny it. 

Months of it. Months and months. John and Rosie, filling the flat with their merry, noisy presence. Letting him get used to it. Letting him trick himself into believing they belonged there.

"I don't need a minder." 

Guilt, he thought. Penance of some kind. 

"I'm not minding you." 

Obligation. 

"Go to work, John," Sherlock said.

John stared at him. John did not move. His hand twitched, faint but visible. 

Silence stretched between them, thick, interminable. 

Finally, John blew out a breath of air. His shoulders dropped and he nodded, a small motion, seemingly meant more for himself than Sherlock. He picked up his coat, went out the door without another word. 

*

Sherlock looked at the smiley face, the careful thick yellow curves of it. The bullet holes, the wallpaper peeling up at the edges. The books on the shelves, second-hand, musty and well-used. They were the books that had lined the shelves before, but they were not _his._ He had not been the one to saturate their pages with old cigarette smoke, he had not spilled the tea that had stained their covers, he had not been the one to dog-ear and highlight meaningful passages. 

Rosie had left her fingerprints all over the glass case covering the bat. 

He stood up from his chair, went to the window. Baker Street was lively with foot traffic. John was gone.

*

He dressed, went to NSY. Harassed Lestrade into providing him details on a recent murder. Called him Greg. 

The murder was boring. He solved it anyway, spent twenty minutes crouched in a skip hunting up the murder weapon, returned triumphant. 

Lestrade clapped him on the back as he went to go make the arrest.

*

He went back home and solved minor mysteries on Twitter, half-slumped in his chair. He avoided his laptop. He avoided looking too closely at the walls. 

He forced himself to stop when he realized he'd just helped a woman get to the bottom of why her husband had suddenly begun wearing a hairpiece to work (new secretary, office flirtation, desire to look younger, _obvious_ ), and that he'd done so automatically, without even passively attempting to insult her for not being able to figure out such a thing on her own.

He was scraping the bottom of the barrel. He had _standards_ , for God's sake. 

He told himself he wasn't watching the door. Or the clock. 

No one stopped by. 

*

He dreamt of Musgrave Hall, of Eurus weeping in the ruined bones of their childhood home, of his eerie drive down the overgrown path, of finding John in the water, eyes bright in the moonlight. 

They had propped each other up like soldiers, they had stayed strong, and they had laughed in the face of death. 

He had lost that manic edge in the car on the long trip home, after the hospital, after they'd been checked over and released. John next to him, comfortable silence, his own thoughts running rampant. 

_Christ,_ John had said, with a helpless little laugh, his face turned towards the window. _I really just want to hug my daughter. Immediately._

And Sherlock hadn't wanted to giggle in the darkness anymore, he hadn't wanted the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he hadn't wanted the two of them against the rest of the world. In that instant, he hadn't wanted to fight anyone, let alone the rest of the world. Hugging Rosie seemed like a fine idea, the most understandable response to their ordeal that could possibly be conceived. 

And they'd gotten back to London just before the dawn, and Sherlock had looked through the car window as John retrieved his daughter and hugged her close, hugged her and hugged her, apologies and love and something indefinable in that embrace, the kind of thing that could only be forged by fear and loss, and when he finally could not look any more he'd told the driver to go. 

He went out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, stopped. 

John was at the table with a bowl of cereal, reading the paper, mug of tea steaming in front of him. He glanced up, briefly, as Sherlock entered, then went back to reading. As if it were any other morning. As if this were a perfectly ordinary occurrence. 

A delighted sound from the sitting room, Rosie in her little collapsible pen, hands outstretched for him, fingers grasping greedily at the air. 

Sherlock looked back at John, hesitated. Then went on into the sitting room, picked Rosie up. She immediately tangled her fists in the back of his dressing gown. 

"Ba," she said, quite firm. She pointed.

"Yes," he said, something tight in his throat. He walked her over to the mantel, picked up the glass case. "Bat." 

She giggled at the sight of it. Slapped her hand against the glass. 

They went around the room together. She pointed, leading the way. He stopped, let her examine anything that caught her eye. 

John finished his cereal, said nothing. 

Sherlock stepped up onto the couch cushions, Rosie reaching out to run her hand along the wallpaper, fingers catching against the rough texture where the paper had pulled away from the holes. She looked back at him, eyes bright. Pulled his hair. 

John stood, rinsed his bowl in the sink, put it away. 

They finished their circuit around the room. Sherlock stood, hesitant, by the door, Rosie a warm weight against his side. She tugged insistently at his hair. 

John leaned his back against the counter, looked at them. Folded his arms. 

"I'm not minding you," he said. 

Sherlock blinked. Ducked his head as Rosie gave another mighty yank. 

"I am concerned about you," he said. "Sometimes. Of course I am. But that's not why I—that's not why we come here." He hesitated, cleared his throat. "Or, that's not the only reason why we come here."

Rosie untangled her hands from his hair, twisted around in his arms, looking for something else to grab at. His face felt strangely warm. 

"I worry that I'm overstepping, sometimes," John said. "Showing up whenever I want." 

"You're not," he said. His voice sounded rough to his own ears. 

"Good," John said. He looked down at the ground, back up. "Well. Anything on?" 

"Um," Sherlock looked back towards the sitting room, at the closed laptop sitting on his desk like the world's most innocuous patience grenade, thought about the woman on his Twitter, the one with the husband with the roving eye. Boring. Inappropriate for present company. Already solved, anyway. He suddenly, desperately wanted a case. Any case. The Borgia Pearl, even.

"Didn't think so," John said. "Fortunately—" 

Sherlock lifted his head, surprised by the warm, enthusiastic, insistent tone. 

"Some skeletal remains came in to Barts last night," John said. "For analysis. The murderer's already confessed—" Sherlock tried not to feel too crestfallen about that, "—but Molly seemed to feel you might appreciate the opportunity to look at some, um. Aged mud samples. From the remains. They'd been buried in odd spots all around London." 

"Molly," he said. 

"Yeah. She texted. Thought you might—well." John laughed, a nervous sound, scratched the back of his neck. "She said it's been a bit boring, really, without you dropping in at all hours to cause trouble." 

He looked at the microscope on the table. He'd gone to Barts shortly after the Sherrinford debacle, knowing he had to, not quite knowing what to say. It had been uncomfortable. There had been a hurt look about her, one that he'd put there. It wasn't the fleeting annoyance that he usually triggered, but something deeper. Something more permanent.

Something unforgivable, perhaps. He was growing used to that.

She hadn't slapped him. She hadn't shouted at him. They'd lingered for too long, neither particularly good with words. She had not made much eye contact. 

On his way out, she'd made an offhand comment about a delivery of microscopes that had just arrived for the laboratory.

_They just came stacked in a big box,_ she'd said, looking at the wall, her laugh a little forced. _Not even an inventory or packing slip, and no one can find the original purchase order. Causing a big headache for the Accounts Payable department. So. Um. No one here knows how many there were supposed to be._

That had seemed like a hint, so he'd helped himself to one on the way home. He'd supposed it was a peace offering, of sorts. 

Still, there was a wide distance between one misplaced microscope and currying favours from the morgue at all hours, and he'd assumed that was a distance he was not meant to bridge. 

"Anyway," John said, fidgeting with his hands. "She said the samples are taking a long time to process, and she mentioned it'd been a while since she'd seen Rosie. So. We're headed over there. And I figured you—well. It's been a while since you've written one of those incredibly boring blog posts on inane subjects, and. Yeah. The whole mud thing seemed right up your street." 

It occurred to him that he should be responding in some way. He nodded. He looked down at Rosie, who was absently chewing on the lapel of his dressing gown. She sensed that his attention had returned to her and lifted her head, grinned. She'd drooled all over him. Her face was sticky. 

"Understanding the makeup of the soil in any given location is paramount to conducting a proper criminal investigation," he said to her. "A tiny splash of mud can be the string that unravels even the most complicated scheme." 

She giggled, reached for his hair again. He ducked his head out of the way. There was something warm blooming in his chest. 

"Here," John said, reaching out, lifting her away, making a shooing motion with his other hand as he tucked her against his hip. "Go get ready." 

_I am ready,_ he thought, but he knew what John had meant.


	4. Heights

*

They returned to the flat in high spirits. 

Sherlock had been delighted to discover that one of the mud samples was rich with trace amounts of vegetation, and had immersed himself simultaneously in chemical analysis of the components and research of the area from where the samples had originated. 

He had lost himself, for a time, his focus narrowed to the view through the microscope, only peripherally aware of John, Molly and Rosie. He thought they might have left the lab in search of lunch, at some point, but he wasn't entirely certain. 

He'd put word out to his homeless network, and was happily scrolling through the photos of derelict buildings and vacant lots that they'd texted back when John had inserted himself into his line of sight. 

"Sherlock," he'd said. 

"I've identified three distinct species of grass in this sample alone," he'd said, and he'd looked from John to Molly, who was standing in the doorway. He gave her a smile, a real smile, because this was good, this was wonderful, this was as close to Christmas as he was going to get without anyone actually dying. 

"Good," she'd said, and nodded. "I thought you'd be interested." 

"We're going to head home," John said, bouncing Rosie once in his arms for emphasis. "It's been hours, and I'm starting to run out of things to keep her occupied." 

That had doused cold water onto his good cheer, and he'd stood up quickly from the stool, nearly knocking it over in the process. The metal legs clattered against the floor as he hastily righted it.

He'd opened his mouth to speak, flustered, embarrassed by his own reaction, and Molly (who had always been alarmingly good at reading him) had cleared her throat, drawing John's attention. 

"Actually," she said, glancing once in his direction, just checking, and whatever she saw there was enough for her to continue on. "I've just been paged--need to start an autopsy. Rush job. The family wants the toxicology screening back right away, so I'll need the lab."

She finished with a meaningful look at Sherlock. 

He'd had enough time to recover his composure, to pull himself back from the dizzying edge of panic. He'd cleared his throat, buttoned his suit jacket.

"This test is nearly finished." 

"I'll email you the results," she said, too quickly, but John (blessedly unobservant John) showed no signs of picking up on their wordless conversation.

"I could just—" 

"Sherlock, don't push your luck," John had laughed, still wonderfully, perfectly unobservant. "Molly's been kind enough to let you tie up the entire lab for the last—" he looked at his watch, winced, rolled his shoulders, "—six hours." 

He'd sighed, a theatric sound, far more dramatic than the situation warranted, and had followed John to the door.

"Bye, you," Molly said, stooping to kiss Rosie on her golden head. "Don't be a stranger, yeah?" 

"Thank you," Sherlock said. He did not, precisely, mean for the use of the lab. Or for the mud. Well, partially for the mud.

"Yeah," Molly said. "Of course. Just—um," she smiled, looked down. "Take care, all right?" 

He didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. 

"And—um. You can, you know? Come here. You don't have to avoid—it's all right. Just not in the middle of the night, or when I'm not on shift." She hesitated, relented. "Unless it's an emergency." 

He'd swallowed, nodded. And then he'd followed John and Rosie out into the hallway. 

By the time they reached Baker Street, he'd shaken off the residual awkwardness and discomfort, was back to coasting on the high that came with a particularly interesting puzzle. He received three more texts from his homeless network, crumbling warehouses and muddy lots with patchy grass. 

He bounded up the stairs, booted up his laptop while once more scrolling through the pictures he'd received. He could only hope that he wouldn't have to wait too long for a crime that would necessitate showing off his newfound expertise. 

John followed at a slower pace. There was something good-humoured and indulgent in his face. He deposited Rosie in the little collapsible pen that had become something of a permanent fixture in the sitting room. 

"I shouldn't have come up," he said, rueful. "It's getting on her dinner time, I should really—" 

"Kitchen," Sherlock said, waving his hand absently over his shoulder.

Footsteps, retreating behind him. He ignored them, glancing down at his email. Nothing from Molly. She said she'd send—how long had it been? He glanced at the clock. Not quite forty-five minutes. Perhaps not quite enough time for her to interpret the results and send them his way. He huffed, stood up from the chair, looked out the window. 

There was the creak of a cabinet opening, and then a conspicuous silence from the kitchen. 

"Problem?" he asked, turning around. 

John was gaping into an open cabinet. He shut the door, turned towards Sherlock. His mouth did something complicated, and then he shook his head, turned back, opened the cabinet again.

"You've got—" John cleared his throat, turned back towards Sherlock. "You've got—well. What looks like enough microwave-ready toddler meals to maintain an entire army of babies for the foreseeable future." 

"An army of babies would be horribly impractical, John," he said, sweeping into the kitchen and nudging John out of the way. He reached up, took down one of the little cartons. Glanced over at Rosie. "Pasta all right, or would she prefer chicken?" 

John followed his gaze, then went right back to gaping into the cabinet. It was getting a bit alarming, now. 

"Pasta," Sherlock decided, closing the cabinet. 

The sound seemed to jar John out of his odd stupor. "When did you—why—"

"Oh, I had an experiment planned," Sherlock lied easily. "Haven't gotten around to it yet." 

He set to work heating up Rosie's dinner, overly conscious of John's eyes on him. 

"Go see if Molly sent the results," he said, finally, unable to bear the silence. 

John let out a little disbelieving laugh, but accepted the dismissal, his footsteps trailing lightly into the sitting room. 

Sherlock settled Rosie into the portable highchair he'd kept folded up in the far corner of the kitchen, just _waiting_ to be put to use, then stood and watched as she happily plunged both hands into the pasta. 

"Watson," he said. "This is for nutritive and not artistic purposes." 

She seemed quite intent on smearing most of the sauce on her face, but as the bulk of it eventually wound up in her mouth, he wasn't overly concerned.

He returned his attention to John, who had settled into the wooden chair by the window and was frowning down at the laptop. 

"Did she send it yet?" 

"No."

"Is it there?" 

"No." 

"Did she send it?" 

"Sherlock!" John half-laughed half-scolded. "She'll send it, just give her a chance." 

He glanced back at Rosie, who did not appear to have made much headway at all in finishing her dinner. 

"Find something else. I'll solve it while I'm waiting." 

"All right, hold on," John said, turning back to squint at the screen. "How's this—" 

"Boring." 

"I haven't even read it yet!" 

"Next." 

"All right, here—oh."

Sherlock looked up. John was no longer smiling. 

"Sorry," John said. "That one's—um. Personal, I think. I didn't mean to—" 

Huffing, Sherlock stalked over to stand behind John, peered over his shoulder. Froze.

The email from Gloria Trevor. Opened, now, its contents right there, spilled out across the screen.

He turned away without reading too closely. Swallowed. His skin had come over cold. 

John was watching him, he could tell. He gave a dismissive little wave, just a bored flick of his fingers. "Not that. Find something else." 

John was silent. 

He whirled back. "Well? What does it say?"

John shifted in his seat, frowned. "It's—you should probably just—" 

"You've already got it open, might as well read it. What does it say?" 

John sighed. 

"Well?" 

"I'm reading." 

Sherlock worried at his lower lip for a moment. He wanted a cigarette. There were none in the flat. He considered his options, then lunged for his coat. 

"Sherlock," John said. 

He froze halfway to the door, looked back to John.

"She's thanking you," John's voice was quiet.

Sherlock blinked. 

"Thanking me? For what? Why?" 

"Because after more than thirty years of not knowing what had happened to her son, she was finally able to bring him home." 

He fidgeted where he stood, found himself unable to meet John's eyes, fixed his gaze somewhere over John's shoulder. "Hardly seems appropriate, considering the circumstances." 

The chair creaked as John shifted. 

"Right," Sherlock said, when the silence between them had stretched on just long enough to be unbearable. "So. An entirely unnecessary and poorly advised note of thanks. Anything else? Or was that all?" 

"Well, she invited you out for a memorial service, but that was this past Saturday." 

"She what?" 

"Sherlock, you _are_ familiar with the concept of funerals." 

"Yes, but—" 

He cut himself off, certain that nothing he was about to say was appropriate to voice. 

_But Victor died years ago._

_But it's been months since his remains were found. Surely any necessary arrangements have already been made and carried out._

_But—_

"Sherlock," John said, and he sounded concerned and not at all exasperated or willing to drop the subject, and that was not how this conversation was meant to go. 

"Of course I'm familiar with funerals," he said, drawing himself up, pulling his armor close. "I had one." 

John shut his eyes. Put his hand up to his mouth, pressed. When he spoke, his voice was wooden. "Please don't tell me you were actually there that day." 

"All right, I won't tell you." 

" _Christ,_ Sherlock—" 

Rosie chose that moment to begin wailing, distressed by the rising tension in the room. Her face was smeared with red sauce, her plate empty. 

John shut his mouth, his shoulders drooping in defeat. He turned away from Sherlock, went to her, picked her up. Buried his face against her curls the way he had in the early morning light after Musgrave, while Sherlock had watched from the back of the car. 

"I'm sorry," John said, and though he spoke into his daughter's ear, his gaze lifted to meet Sherlock's. 

Sherlock wanted to look away. Found himself unable to do so. 

_I'm sorry, too,_ he didn't say. He wasn't quite sure if he was sorry for John or for himself. _I jumped and nothing was ever right again._

He'd dressed as an old man for his own funeral, had lingered in the back of the room amongst a press of former clients and curiosity-seekers. He'd been in love with his own cleverness, high on it, had been both surprised and pleased by the nice things being said about him. 

John had looked sad and he'd dismissed it, he'd _dismissed it,_ had taken his friend's sorrow and devotion and had processed it in only the simplest way. He'd been touched, of course, by his loyalty. And had assumed that the sorrow etched on John's face only meant he'd be exceedingly happy once Sherlock returned alive and well. That they'd laugh together, once the shock of it had passed, that John would delight in hearing all about how Sherlock had cheated death.

The joke had been on Sherlock, in the end. 

He couldn't say that. Could he? No. Not now, not years removed, not when he'd spent years grasping and clinging at the battered remnants of their friendship, not after Mary, not here in the wreckage of all that he'd wrought. Not here, not in his reassembled flat that looked right but felt so utterly wrong. 

"Why would the Trevors have a memorial service now?" he asked, instead. _And why would they invite me?_ he didn't add. 

"Well," John said, and he shifted Rosie on his hip. She had stopped crying, was instead snuffling against his shoulder, her small hands tangling up in his shirt, leaving little smears of red sauce in their wake. John did not seem to notice, or mind. "I can't say for sure. But I imagine that finding Victor's remains brought a sense of—well. Closure. And now that some time has passed, maybe they wanted to—ah. Share that. With people close to them." 

"You think I should have gone." 

"I don't think you should do anything you don't want to do," John said. 

It seemed an incomplete answer, and John slid his eyes away under the guise of gently rocking Rosie, who clearly no longer required soothing. 

*

He slept, and he dreamt.

There was Sherrinford, and Musgrave, the dark winding path and the well. The moonlight and the silence and the whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades. And after all of that, there were harsh fluorescent overheads in the hospital, the steady murmur of voices, questions and answers and brief examinations, dry clothes for John, an all-clear for both of them. 

There had been a car waiting for them at the entrance. Not the police vehicle that had transported them from Musgrave, but a nondescript black sedan. Mycroft's doing, no doubt. Sherlock couldn't be bothered to care.

"I don't even know what time it is," John said as they settled against warm leather in the back seat. He rubbed his face.

"Very late or very early, depending on your interpretation," Sherlock said. 

"I just—" John let out a helpless little laugh, shook his head. He looked lost in a way that he rarely did. "Christ, I really just want to hug my daughter. Immediately. I—" 

"Yes, of course," he said. He swallowed, looked away. "Of course you do." 

John had been given a pair of scrubs to change into at the hospital, he was dry now, and they were both well-warmed by the car heater. But he still had a bedraggled, waterlogged look about him; he seemed, in that moment, small and exhausted and _lost,_ terribly, terribly lost. 

"I keep—I keep passing her off. From person to person. As if not having her around is supposed to make all of this easier. Somehow. And it's not—that's not helping, is it?" 

He looked up, his eyes dark-circled and beseeching, as if Sherlock could possibly have an answer for him. As if Sherlock could possibly make anything better. 

"You did what you had to do," Sherlock said. He hesitated. "But. Maybe now it's time to do things differently." 

John was silent. Then he blew out a breath of air through his teeth. Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. He nodded. "Yeah. Maybe—yeah." 

They did not speak for some time. John dozed, his head lolling against the window. Sherlock watched the countryside slip by, alien and unfamiliar in the darkness. He tried to find reference points in his memory, was largely unsuccessful. 

He'd rewritten his own past. 

He hadn't simply disregarded or deleted a bit of useless information. He'd taken reality and _distorted_ it, bent it to his will, reshaped it into something he could live with.

His mind, that finely tuned instrument he'd built his entire sense of self-worth around, the mind he'd believed to be remarkable, unassailable (chemical interference notwithstanding), had proven untrustworthy. It had turned on him like a faithless dog, had bitten and bitten deep. 

_Redbeard._

How, _how_ could he have forgotten? 

Even now, it was like looking through dirty glass. He could remember little about Victor, barely more than hazy impressions of his smile, the sound of laughter carrying on the damp air. They had thought themselves fierce adventurers, had they not? Brave and fearless?

 _We both thought you were an idiot,_ Mycroft had once said to him. _Until we met other children._

He shut his eyes. Breathed.

It wasn't until John had stirred awake and laid a hesitant hand on his shoulder that he realized he was making a low noise in the back of his throat, something strangled and choked. His face was heating, his eyes prickling. 

"Hey," John said. "Hey. What—" 

_People do get so sentimental about their pets,_ Moriarty's teasing tone, the gentle sound of water all around. Ripples on John's face, shimmering blue reflections.

John pulled gently at his shoulder, tugging his hands away from his face. He did not recall lifting them, had no idea when they had come to be pressed against his eyes. 

He took a deep, gasping breath, cut off the wretched sound he was making. Pressed his lips tightly together to keep from making it again. 

"Right," John said, voice quiet, decisive. He took a breath, an oddly deep one. Then he pulled a bit more firmly on Sherlock's shoulder, shifting him sideways so that he was leaning against John. His left arm came up and snugged around Sherlock's back.

To his credit, driver did not react, did not so much as glance up into the rearview mirror. 

Sherlock found his head being guided to rest against John's shoulder, the thin material of the scrub top soft against his cheek. His forehead brushed up under John's chin. John's hand slid up and down his arm, squeezing, a vaguely soothing, rhythmic motion. 

He supposed they hugged now. For comfort. That was—that was something they did. Now. 

Was he _crying?_

"Sherlock," John said. His voice was low, his head dipped so that he was speaking very close to Sherlock's ear. His breath ruffled the hair at Sherlock's temple. "You—you do know that you're the only reason any of us made it through this alive, right? No one else could have done what you did." 

He recoiled a bit at that, shaking his head, but John held him firmly in place, kept his hand stroking soothingly up and down his arm.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. The words were bitter in his mouth and he spat them out. "I'm the reason for all of it in the first place." 

"Yeah, no, that's—not at all true." John's voice in his ear, quiet, insistent. "This was something that was done _to_ you. And, so help me God, the next time I see your brother—" 

"I think he's seen the error of his ways, don't you?" 

Some of the tension went out of John. "Well. Yes. Probably." 

He thought it might be some time before his mind left off on replaying the image of Mycroft loosening his tie, presenting his heart as a target. Accepting, without question, that he'd be the one chosen to die. 

He opened his eyes. Took a breath. Self-assessed. He seemed to have regained some semblance of control over himself. 

"You were able to sort it out," John said. "Not Mycroft. You." 

He scoffed, lifted his head, met John's eyes. "What use am I if I can't even trust my own mind?"

"There is nothing wrong with your mind, Sherlock." 

"I turned my dead friend into a dog." 

"You were a child," John said. "A child trying to cope with an unimaginable trauma." 

"I was—" 

"A child," John said again. "It doesn't matter how bloody smart you were, you were still a child. And for reasons I will never understand, your parents and brother decided to go along with it. I've—I've been to your parents' house, Sherlock. There are no pictures of your sister. You might have written her out of your memories, but you didn't do it alone. You had help." 

Everyone knew, he thought. Everyone knew but me. Even Moriarty. How he must have _laughed._

John was still rubbing his arm. Absent, slow strokes. Comforting. Sherlock leaned into the touch, sighed, shut his eyes. 

A small, distant part of him was horrified by this surrender to base emotions. But it was small. Distant. Easily ignored. 

He could have this, now. He could have this much. This was something they did. 

They did not speak further. John's hand slowed, stilled, his grip slackened as he succumbed to sleep. 

Sherlock did not move away, sat very still, very quiet, kept his breaths in time with John's. He was warm and comfortable, pressed against Sherlock's side.

They were nearing London when John's breathing changed, when he stirred towards wakefulness. Sherlock detached himself, slid carefully back over onto his side of the car, left a small but respectful distance between them. 

"Oh," John said, sitting upright with a sudden jolt. Awake with the speed of the soldier. "Sherlock, you—you can't go back to Baker Street. There's nowhere for you to—" 

Baker Street was in shambles, roped-off, inaccessible. His mind felt much the same.

"Come back with me," John said. "You can—" 

"No," he said. 

John fell silent. Frowned. He fidgeted with the edge of his scrub top. 

"There are some details I'll need to go over with Mycroft," Sherlock said, straightening his shoulders. "He'll be expecting me." 

John made an incredulous sound that was not unlike laughter. "Expecting you? A few hours ago we didn't even know if he was alive." 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Yes, but that was hours ago." 

He must have sounded appropriately disdainful, because John went quiet again.

The sky had begun to lighten, the sun peeking over the horizon.

The car went to John's house first. Sherlock watched through the window as John retrieved Rosie from a disgruntled-looking neighbor.

 _I keep passing her off. From person to person,_ John had said. There had been something bitterly self-loathing in his voice. 

_Anyone but you,_ John's words, by way of Molly. Her face pinched, apologetic, sad. 

The neighbor shut the door firmly. Not quite a slam, but near enough.

Sherlock watched John as he stood in the weak morninglight, hugged his daughter close. His eyes were closed. He was breathing hard, seemingly overcome with some fierce emotion. Rosie blinked and yawned and fussed, charmingly oblivious. 

She'd grown, since he'd last seen her. Babies tended to do that. 

Sherlock shut his eyes.

"You can go," he said to the driver. 

He opened his eyes again as they pulled away from the kerb, looked back, unable to stop himself. John was standing in the garden, watching him, his face troubled. 

*

"I thought I'd try a relationship," Eurus said, her bow halting abruptly, mid-note. 

Sherlock hesitated, removed the violin from his shoulder. "Sorry?" 

"I was curious," she said. "About human reactions to the overly romanticized notion of _heartbreak._ "

She stared steadily at him, her face inscrutable. 

"And did you?" he asked, finally. "Break hearts?"

"Oh yes," she said, her voice flat. "Several. Would have broken John Watson's heart too, but his wife went and did that for me." 

His breath caught and he cleared his throat to cover it, forced himself to hold her gaze. 

"I was going to talk him into killing her." This, said matter-of-fact, calm, without any heat. "Never got the chance, of course. Had to change tacks." 

"Why—" his voice emerged quiet, hoarse, and he swallowed, tried again. "Why would you do that?" 

"Because I wanted to hurt you."

He nodded, looked down at the violin in his hand. Lifted it back to his shoulder. 

"Don't do that," she said.

He paused. 

"You're seeking to avoid continuing our conversation because it makes you uncomfortable." 

"Did you bring it up because you wanted to make me uncomfortable?" he asked. 

"I brought it up because I wanted you to know." 

"Well," he said, and thought of John, the look on his face in the shifting blue light in the aquarium, Mary's blood dark against his hands. The sound he'd made, guilt and grief and anger all at once. "Now I know." 

"It was remarkably easy to pique his interest," she said. "A little mystery. A flash of something bright, something extraordinary right in the midst of all that dull, _tedious_ family life. A promise of adventure, an idle fantasy to lift him out of that mire of built-up resentment and anger. So much anger hidden away there—did you know that? Of course you did. He loved her, of course, but he hated her too. Interesting, isn't it? The duality? How can two opposing emotions exist at the same time?"

"Eurus," he said, because he didn't want to think about Mary. Thinking about Mary made something terribly cold settle into the pit of his stomach. 

"He liked the danger of it, you know, even _thinking_ about cheating on someone who could kill him. It gave him a thrill." 

He shifted where he stood, unable to help it. 

"I _am_ making you uncomfortable," she said. 

He bit back a sharp reply. Pursed his lips. Nodded. 

"I only had to read his blog to find out what he liked," she said. "What he'd respond to. What would catch his attention in the smallest possible window of time."

She turned away, went back to her little bed, set the violin down carefully. Returned, walked right up to the glass. 

"Mad," she said, ticking off on her fingers as she spoke. "Charming. Likeable. Unsafe." 

There was something about her words— 

He jerked his thoughts back, sharply. He could not afford to let his mind wander, not here. She would see his weakness, would likely be unable to resist exploiting it. They had made progress, yes, incredible progress, but she was still dangerous. She would, likely, always be dangerous. 

"He blamed you for her death," she said. "Did you know that?" 

"Of course I knew that," he said, and it was too much, too raw, too close to the surface. John's face, cast in blue. His own hand, outstretched, tentative, falling short. 

"He talked at length about it in our sessions," she said. "All of the ways in which he perceived you'd failed him. Would you like details?" 

"No," he said. 

"I'm not being cruel," she said. "I no longer have any desire to cause you pain." 

"You're not being _deliberately_ cruel," he said. He blew out a shaky breath, forced himself to maintain eye contact. 

"Implying that one can be cruel without intending to." 

"I'll admit it's a distinction that took me some time to master, myself." 

"Would it benefit you, in any way, to know that his blame was misplaced?"

He did not answer. 

"I was easily able to identify multiple instances of faulty reasoning. I could have pointed them out, but I preferred not to." 

_Telling you that I don't blame you any more wasn't the same thing as telling you that I never should have blamed you in the first place,_ John's voice, halting and nearly pleading, his hands clasped warm against Sherlock's chilled skin. 

"I wanted to see what he'd do," she added.

He winced, broke eye contact, turned away. There was no relief to be found in the dreary grey walls. 

*

Mycroft was waiting for him in the hall. He wore a pinched expression. 

Sherlock breezed past him. He'd clenched his hand quite painfully around the handle on his violin case, but could not seem to make himself relax his grip. 

"Sherlock," Mycroft said. 

"Not now," he said. 

Mycroft did not press. They passed the helicopter ride in silence.

*

The flat was empty when he arrived home. 

He sat in his chair, looked across the room at the empty chair that wasn't quite John's. Looked at the wall that wasn't quite right, at the books on the shelves that weren't quite his. 

He was restless, uneasy. 

_Charming. Likeable. Unsafe._

Those were the qualities that Eurus had elected to embody in order to catch John's eye, to ensnare him in her trap. 

Alone now, unguarded, he was helpless against the tide of his own thoughts. 

_I only had to read his blog to find out what he liked._

He stood up without meaning to, scrubbed at his hair with both hands. He very badly wanted a cigarette.

Instead he went to his desk, opened his laptop, looked at the email from Gloria Trevor. 

He looked at it for a long time. 

And then he closed his email program and began searching train schedules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been posting some outtakes from the first draft of this story [on Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-outtake), if anyone is interested in reading further.


	5. Depths

*

Gloria and Scott Trevor lived in a two bedroom terraced home not far from the rail station in Cardiff. 

He had found himself unable to sleep, hadn't _wanted_ to sleep, not with Eurus's words in his head. 

Instead, he'd passed the night hunched in his chair, scrolling through his Twitter feed and thinking of cigarettes with no small measure of longing. By five o'clock, he'd showered, dressed, and left the flat. His train wasn't until eight, but he hadn't wanted to be caught out, should John happen to stop by.

He spent an hour roaming the streets of London, very carefully not thinking of Victor Trevor, whose face he could barely even remember. 

He availed himself of a disappointing cooked breakfast on the train, picked at it, arrived in Cardiff just past ten-thirty.

He circled around the street first before doubling back. Amused himself deducing the neighbors from the state of their gardens and bins. The Trevors' house was neatly kept, brick. The front door had been recently painted. 

He stood on the pavement, not oscillating, just standing and looking up, for a stretch of time. The springtime air was warming; just a shade too warm, really, for his coat. He kept it drawn close around him, regardless. 

Eventually, he squared his shoulders and went up to the front door, rang the bell. 

He stepped back, put his hands in his pockets. Flexed his fingers. 

The door opened. A woman looked back at him. 

She was his mother's age. She wore jeans and a loose-fitting blouse. The jeans were faded, old, worn. She'd been gardening, or doing housework. Her hair was dyed. A few strands of pet hair clung around her shins and he thought: _dog_ , but then amended his deduction when no barking echoed from inside the house. Cat, then. Grey, with a habit of circling round the ankles, rubbing against legs. Faint dusting of crumbs in the corner of her mouth—had recently finished breakfast. There was nothing at all familiar in her face, nothing that jogged even the faintest glimmer of memory.

He realized he'd been staring without speaking for longer than was traditionally appropriate. 

He cleared his throat. Opened his mouth. 

"You're Sherlock Holmes," she said. It wasn't a question. 

He shut his mouth. Nodded. 

"Well," she said. She folded her arms across her chest. Inexplicably, she smiled. "You might as well come in." 

*

Victor had been memorialized with a simple grey stone, amidst a sea of similar monuments old and new. His name was etched neatly in block letters. Beneath that, the relevant dates, the span between birth and death far too short. And, below that, the words: _Beloved Son and Friend._

The stone was new, its edges crisp, unweathered. A fresh bandage for a very old wound. 

He stood for a time, sweating in his coat, just looking down at it.

There was new grass sprouting up, green and fresh. The ground was damp, soft from recent rains, and there were bare spots in the grass where it had been trampled up. From the memorial service, no doubt. A small group of friends and family, gathered in the cemetery to speak fondly of someone who had been absent from their lives for more than thirty years. 

_Closure,_ John had called it. 

He cleared his throat, hesitated, not quite sure what he was meant to do. Settled for reaching forward and placing a tentative hand on Victor's cool stone.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. He felt a bit foolish, speaking out loud. Victor could not hear him. No one could hear him. He might as well have been speaking to himself. 

Still, people did things like this. Didn't they? 

_Closure._

John had spoken to his grave. He'd seen him do it. He'd stood within range and had watched, had listened, and had been much too stupid to put together what it all meant. 

He patted the top of the stone, as if there were any way he could, through the years, impart some measure of comfort to a small child who had died alone and cold and frightened. 

Then he withdrew his hand, uncomfortable, self-conscious at the gesture. 

Gloria Trevor had herded him into a squashy chair, and he'd sat, accepted the mug of tea she'd pressed into his hands. A grey tabby cat had come slinking out of the next room to wind circles around his ankles, and he'd brushed ineffectually at the clinging hairs it left behind. 

"I wasn't sure we'd hear from you," she'd said. "We had a bit of a bet, Scott and I." 

It seemed an odd sort of thing to bet on, he'd thought, but had held his tongue. 

"He stepped out to the shops," she'd added. "Sometimes he goes for long walks. But he should be back soon." 

He'd nodded, sat very stiffly and carefully, balancing his mug on his knee. He'd taken a sip, mostly to have something to do with his hands. 

"We've followed your career through the years," she said. "It made me happy, knowing you'd done well for yourself." 

_Why on earth would it make you happy?_ he didn't ask. _I failed to save your son. I might as well have killed him myself, for all the good I did him._

Instead, he said: "I don't remember him. At all." 

A flicker of—something—on her face. There and gone. It had made him wish that John was by his side, because John would have known what that expression meant. 

"You were both so very young," she'd said. 

He'd shifted uncomfortably. It seemed that everyone was eager to excuse him his youth, as if it were somehow acceptable to hold him to a lower standard because he'd been a child. 

"There are things you forget," she'd said, her gaze a little distant, a little sad. "About the people you love, when you lose them. He used to laugh, my Victor. He was always happy, even when he was a baby. And I cherish that memory of him—I can so perfectly picture his little smiling face. But I can't hear him. And when I think about it, when I try to recall that sound—it's—it's never quite right. I can never quite get it right." 

"Oh," he'd said, and there had been a tightness in his chest, unexpected. He'd shut his eyes. 

"We knew something terrible had happened to him," she said, her voice very quiet. "We just didn't know quite what. And there were search parties, of course there were, but the police had gone and focused on a vagrant that had been passing through at the time, a man with some sort of unsavory past—they kept on running in the wrong direction, trying to link pieces that just wouldn't fit. And then there was that terrible business with the fire and—"

She paused, looked at his face. He was not sure what she found there. 

"Well," she said. "Time passed. And then it kept passing. Enough time goes by, and everyone sort of moves on, I suppose. There are always new tragedies lined up to take attention away from the ones that came before. After a while, it seemed that Scott and I were the only two people on earth who cared that Victor had ever existed at all." 

He'd opened his mouth. 

"Oh, I know that wasn't true," she said. "I know it now, at least. People are funny about grief. It makes them uncomfortable, all of that raw emotion. And there was plenty of that going around after Victor disappeared. You lose friends in times like that, in the most unexpected ways. People too uncomfortable to go on looking you in the eye, at a loss for what to say—so they say nothing. And it gets easier to go on saying nothing, until all that's left is the ugliness. In some ways, I think the only reason that Scott and I were able to survive it at all was by leaving it all behind, moving away, starting fresh somewhere else." 

"My sister," he said. "She—" 

"She was questioned," Gloria said. "Gently, of course. The police spoke with everyone. Your mother seemed to feel she knew something she wasn't saying but—she was five years old, Sherlock. No one could get through to her. All she would do was sing. Sing and sing and sing. If she'd seen something, she wasn't speaking of it. None of us, at the time, had even entertained the possibility that she'd _done_ something to him. Not me, not Scott, and certainly not the police." 

"I knew," he said. 

She looked up at him, her gaze calm. There was a redness around her eyes.

"Not—specifics. Of course. But I've been told that I—that—" the words caught in his throat, strangling him. 

"Sherlock," she said, gently, far more gently than he deserved. "I have never seen a child so upset as you were in those days following what happened, though I was in no fit state to comfort myself let alone anyone else. And I've spent thirty-three years moving through varying stages of anger and grief and acceptance—it never really stops, not really, no matter what they say—but one thing that I have never doubted, ever, is that there was nothing you could have done."

He shook his head, because that was wrong. It was _wrong._ Victor had been a puzzle, just a puzzle, and he'd been too stupid to solve it. 

"There are a lot of people I can blame," she said. "I can—and did, for years—throw blame at anyone it would stick to. Myself, of course, for not paying closer attention. Scott for the same reasons. Victor would leave and roam for hours and hours and hours, and we'd never worry, never question where he'd gone. Maybe if we had—you see? Your mind can do that, run itself ragged with what-ifs and if-onlys. I can blame your parents, for not being entirely honest about their suspicions. The police, of course, who were so firmly set on their kidnapping narrative that they refused to be open to any other possibilities. The search parties, for underestimating how far a truly determined child would be able to wander. But I will not—and _have never_ placed blame on a heartbroken six-year old child. And if nothing else, I'm glad to finally get the chance to tell you that." 

The air was heavy. His face felt hot. 

"I should be going," he said, standing up, hasty. "Difficult for me to remain away from London for any length of time. Criminals take advantage of it, you know how it is. Thank you for the tea." 

She did not speak, just looked up at him from her seat. She did not seem particularly surprised by his discomfort, nor put off by his sudden desire to leave. He wondered, for a moment, just how much time he had spent with the Trevors as a child, how well she had known him. What of him there had been, then, to even know.

"I—" he said. And stopped. 

She shut her eyes, nodded. Stood. 

"I'll tell Scott you stopped by," she said, stepping forward, taking his hands in hers and squeezing once. "Just—" 

She turned away, holding up one finger in a wait-right-there motion, disappeared down the hallway. The little grey cat trailed after her. 

She returned again holding a photo album, dusty, faded with age. 

He took an instinctive step backwards, glanced at the door. 

"Just—" she said again, setting the album down on a nearby table. She flipped through it quickly, efficiently, without lingering. The pages creaked. "Here." 

She slipped a yellow-tinged photograph out from behind plastic sheeting, two little boys in tricorn hats. Victor with his eyepatch, grinning at the camera, laughing a laugh that his own mother could no longer quite remember. Sherlock with his wooden sword, squinting up into the sun. 

He'd lost that sword to the sea. It had been plucked from his fingers by the unforgiving tide just as Mycroft had wrenched him back up onto the shore.

"I'd like you to have this," she said. 

He looked down at it. His own face, so young, so open. Untouched, as yet, by what was to come. 

"No matter what you think, no matter what you believe," she said, her voice soft, a little sad. "The truth is that you are the reason I was able to say a proper goodbye to my little boy after all this time." 

"I—" he said again. 

She pressed the photo into his hand, much as she had with the tea. Gripped onto him once more, her grasp surprisingly strong. Then she turned away, sniffed once, loudly. 

"Thank you," he said, hesitant. 

And then, because he could think of nothing else to say, he'd slipped the photograph carefully into his coat pocket and gone back out into the warm spring sunshine. He'd shut the door carefully behind him. 

And then, instead of going to the train station as he'd intended, he'd walked the short distance to the cemetery where Victor's bones had been laid to rest. 

The stone had been cool under his hand. 

_Closure._

Was that what this was? He wasn't sure why looking at a stone monument was supposed to make any real difference. Its presence did not render Victor any less dead, nor any more so. 

He found himself wishing again that John were there, that he could ask him what this meant. What it was supposed to mean.

But he and John didn't talk about dead people. Not the ones who mattered. 

He turned away from the stone, started his slow walk back down towards the street.

Stopped. 

John was standing just inside the cemetery gate, leaning on the railing. Watching him.

Sherlock blinked. Forced his legs to continue moving. John did not push away from the railing but waited patiently for him to approach. 

"What are you doing here?" 

John brought one hand up to scratch at the back of his neck, an uncomfortable motion. "I, ah. Stopped by Baker Street this morning. You were gone, but you'd left the train schedule up on your laptop. It—" he hesitated, flashed a tight smile. "It was the kind of deduction even I could make." 

Sherlock stared at him. Stared and stared. 

"I thought you could use a friend," John said, squinting up at the sky, pointedly not looking at Sherlock. He breathed out hard, as if that had been difficult to say. "Maybe. Yeah?" 

It took him a moment to register that _yeah?_ , that little upturn at the end that indicated John had begun doubting his decision. Likely in the face of all the staring.

He nodded, cleared his throat. "Always." 

A flash of embarrassed relief on John's face. An answering nod. 

"Where's—"

John smiled. "Mrs Hudson is a saint. A literal saint. You know that, right?" 

Sherlock raised his brows. 

John laughed a bit in that halting way he had, the way that wasn't really laughing at all. "Because I was ready. I was all ready to—to be that person. The one with the screaming baby on the crowded train for two and a half hours. The one that all of the other passengers want to murder with their bare hands. I was ready to be that person, Sherlock, and I _hate_ that person, but if it meant getting out here— yeah. Only she caught me on the way out the door and insisted that she wanted to spend a bit of time with her goddaughter. Not sure, but I think there's a good chance she might have been motivated solely out of fear for our survival." 

"Surely you exaggerate." 

"What, about the screaming? No, I don't. You've not had the pleasure of traveling with Rosie on the Tube, and those are only short trips. Doubt my ears will ever be the same." 

"Hm. We'll have to work on that," he said. 

John gave him a considering look. Said nothing. 

They walked together out of the cemetery, back to the street. John's hands were curled in loose fists, the way they often were when he was not quite at ease. 

"Did you—did you go see them, then?" he asked, finally. "The Trevors?" 

Sherlock looked at him out of the corner of his eye, not quite able to read the expression on his face. "Yes." 

"All right?" 

"No," Sherlock said, because it wasn't all right, not really, there wasn't anything in the world that could be done to truly make it all right. Not for the Trevor family, and not for him. And yet—

_You are the reason I was able to say a proper goodbye to my little boy after all this time._

"I don't remember him, John," he said, interrupting whatever it was that John was in the midst of trying to say. 

John stopped talking, stopped walking too, turned to look up at him. The sun was bright on his face.

"I don't remember Victor at all. And his own mother doesn't—she doesn't even remember what it sounded like when he laughed. He was my best friend, and he died alone. He deserved more than that, don't you think?" 

John opened his mouth, shut it again. Frowned. "It's not really a question of 'deserved,' Sherlock." 

"Then what is it?" he asked, frustrated. "It's—"

It was tied up in too many things, things that had gotten snarled up, rubbed raw, left to fester. It was him, his useless, _useless_ mind, undeserving of the confidence that had been placed in him. It was Mary, murdering him to keep a secret but dying to save his life. It was John, John who had come to mean more to him than anything in the world, John whose life he'd saved and summarily ruined in turn. 

He'd thought himself so _clever._ But he'd failed. He'd failed Victor, he'd failed Mary, he'd failed John. He always failed, when it counted. 

Mary had put a bullet in him and taken one for him, and she, too, would fade. Her daughter would never even know her. John would, in time, forget the small details; scents and sounds and touch. There would come a day when John would struggle for a scrap of memory, just the faint sound of her laugh, and would not be able to grasp it. And regardless of who was to blame, regardless of who made what choice in the moment, it was still down to him in the end. If he hadn't intervened when she'd run—

"If you hadn't intervened, Sherlock, I'd still be well on the way to forgetting those things, because she would be _gone._ " John said, his voice tight, and _dear God_ he'd been speaking out loud that whole time. 

He shook his head, horrified at himself, horrified at the reaction he'd provoked in John. "She—" 

"She saw that there was danger, and she _ran._ Maybe that was the right choice for her. I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have followed her. But we did, Sherlock, we followed, and she chose to come back. She made that choice. You didn't force her. I didn't force her. No one tied her up and put her on that plane. She came home, but she would have run again, eventually. The next time something happened. And the next time, and the time after that. She wasn't—" John shut his eyes, tilted his head back, breathed in through his nose. "She wasn't _permanent._ She was never going to be forever." 

"John." 

"It wasn't going to work," John said. "It was never going to work. I wanted it to, and she wanted it to, but we never had a chance. And I need you to—you need to _know_ that, Sherlock, because you tried harder than she or I ever did to hold us together." 

_He loved her, of course, but he hated her too,_ Eurus's words, so flat and matter-of-fact. 

John was still talking, still shaking his head and speaking in that rueful voice. "—you were, Christ, Sherlock, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but you were better at the whole marriage thing than Mary or I ever were." 

_Mad. Charming. Likeable. Unsafe._

"John," he said, his voice emerging rough. He was having difficulty, it seemed, properly forming words. "You need to—I need to understand what you're saying. I don't know what you mean." 

John blew out another breath of air, stepped up very close. He squared his shoulders. "What I'm saying is that in spite of the world—and everyone in it, including yourself—doing a fine job of convincing you you're at fault for all of the bad things that have happened, you're not—" he cut himself off, shook his head, pressed his lips together in a hard line. "—you aren't at fault. For any of it. Quite the contrary, actually, you're the—you're the person who tried the hardest. Every time." 

"I don't—" 

"Victor Trevor didn't deserve what happened to him," John said. "Of course he didn't. He didn't deserve it, but it happened anyway. That's the way it goes, Sherlock. There's no one keeping score so that it all evens out in the end. We all just have to do the best we can with the hand we're dealt, even if that hand is complete shit." 

He could not think of a single thing to say. 

That was not, exactly, true. There were things he wanted to say. But he couldn't make himself say them, so instead he breathed in sharply and said: "There's a train to London in twenty minutes. We should be able to make it if we walk quickly." 

*

He did not speak again until they were settled in their seats, Cardiff falling away behind them through dirty glass. 

The train was crowded and they sat close, shoulder-to-shoulder. John smelled faintly of aftershave. 

John had done this. John had gotten on a train and travelled all the way to Cardiff to find him, to offer his own brand of quiet support. 

"Thank you," Sherlock said quietly. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, not quite daring to look. 

"Yeah," John said, his own voice rough. He nodded, bumped their shoulders together. "Of course." 

*

They pushed through the door at Baker Street, stiff and travel-weary, Sherlock's eyes already on Mrs Hudson's door. 

"Oh, go on," John said. "She'll be happy to see you." 

And John had gone on up the stairs, the sound of his steps so familiar and wonderful that for a moment Sherlock could pretend that none of it had happened, that this was still _home._

Then he went and knocked on Mrs Hudson's door. 

She opened it in a rush, her face softening into a smile at the sight of him. She patted his cheek with her hand, just shy of pinching at him like an overly indulgent auntie. 

"Oh, I've got someone here who is going to be very happy to see you," she said. 

As if they'd rehearsed it, Rosie let out a squeal of joy from her pen.

Sherlock went to her, stooped down to meet her outstretched arms, lifted her up. She babbled cheerily at him, and he could not quite stop himself from pressing a kiss to the top of her head. 

When he looked up, Mrs Hudson was watching him with a fond smile. 

"Oh," she said. "She just loves you." 

He blinked, looked down at Rosie. She looked back up at him with her big inquisitive eyes, John's eyes, and positively _beamed._

He cleared his throat. "Babies tend to prefer the familiar—" 

"You," Mrs Hudson swatted at him gently. "Don't start in with that rubbish." 

He shut his mouth, looked down at Rosie again. She was still smiling, eyes bright. 

"Yes," he said. "Well. The feeling's mutual, I suppose." 

"You should have seen him this morning," she said, mirthful now, face full of mischief. "Had his nappy bag on his shoulder, and Rosie strapped to his chest, and the look on his _face,_ it was like he was being marched off to his death. I had to take pity on him." 

"I'm given to understand that she doesn't much care for trains." 

"I was happy to take her," she said, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "It's not like it was before. He's better with her now, don't you think?" 

He did not consider himself particularly well-qualified to answer that question. 

Sherlock had once looked through a car window as John, clad in thin borrowed hospital scrubs, had clutched Rosie close, had buried his face in her hair and breathed her in. His shoulders had been shaking, his grip fierce, as if she could be plucked from him at any moment. 

It had looked like an apology, that embrace. An apology and a promise. 

And he'd watched through glass and had _wanted_ , had wanted with an ache so sudden and acute it had twisted his heart in his chest. He'd been dizzy with it, sick with it, his skin still warm from where he'd been pressed up against John for the duration of their trip home. 

And he wondered, sometimes, when his mind was feeling particularly cruel, what would have happened if he'd gotten out of the car. If he'd said _I've changed my mind, I think I'll stay,_ and had followed John and Rosie into Mary's home, if he'd allowed himself to intrude on their lives, to pretend, even for a little while, that they were a family. 

But instead, he'd leaned forward towards the driver and said _You can go_ and had been unable to keep himself from looking back as the car had pulled away. 

And whatever promise John had conferred to his daughter in that hug on that day, there in the weak breaking dawn, he seemed to have kept. 

He worked steady shifts at the surgery, three days a week. He'd hired a minder for Rosie on those days (had waved off the admittedly halfhearted protests from those around him with a firm "I'm done taking advantage"), but other than that, he went almost nowhere without her. And the—the odd, forced demeanor, the resentment, the _reluctance_ he'd seemed to carry in those early months following her birth had faded away entirely. Replaced by something else. Contentment. Peace. Love. 

Sherlock cleared his throat, aware again that he was taking too long, that the tidal pull of his thoughts had drawn him into his own head. "Yes," he said. "I think he is." 

He took his leave, carried Rosie back up the stairs to their flat (no, his flat, _his_ , just his, it wouldn't do to get confused), where John had already made himself comfortable on the sofa with a mug of tea, was flipping through the newspaper as if his very presence were not something miraculous.

_Mad. Charming. Likeable. Unsafe._

_He loved her, of course, but he hated her too,_

_I only had to read his blog to find out what he liked._

He wanted to fling himself in front of John and demand explanations, demand that he make sense of the muddled mess his own mind had become. He wanted, suddenly, to know if John closed his eyes and found himself back at Musgrave, if he dreamt of the cold and the dark, of whatever it was he'd seen or felt or experienced in that well that had reset his course.

He wanted to know what would have happened if he'd not slipped out from under John's arm in the back of the car as they'd neared London, as John had begun to stir awake. 

He wanted John and Rosie there, at Baker Street, all the time. Forever. 

He wanted. He _wanted._

He stood in the in the doorway with Rosie tucked against his hip, and John looked up at him. Looked up and smiled. Held out a takeaway menu that had gotten mixed up with the paper. 

"Dinner?" John asked. 

Sherlock stepped into the flat, moved towards the mantel, Rosie's hand already stretched out to grab for the bat in its little case. He slipped the photograph out of his pocket, Victor with his forgotten laugh, him with his lost sword, and tucked it behind the skull. 

Then he turned back to John, feeling his lips tug in an answering smile that he was helpless to resist. "Starving."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm continuing to post outtakes from early drafts of this [on my Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-outtake) if anyone is interested in reading further.


	6. Ripples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added a chapter count. One more to go!

*

Weeks slipped by, and the anniversary of Mary's death was suddenly upon him, creeping to the door like a forgotten and wholly unwelcome guest. 

The kitchen was empty when he woke, wandered down the hallway in search of tea. 

He looked at his phone. No messages.

He supposed the silence from John should not come as a surprise. He had not been permitted to attend the funeral, after all. Mrs Hudson had been the one to tell him. She'd been gentle about it, but firm.

He had wanted to be there. It had surprised him, that want. But he had. Wanted. 

On the morning of the funeral he'd gotten himself up early, showered and dressed. Had watched through the window as Mrs Hudson departed, looking small and frail in dark clothing. She'd walked with a certain determination. She had not looked back over her shoulder. 

And instead of going to stand somberly at John's side in the church ( ~~where he belonged~~ where he'd never belong again), he'd rummaged around in his kitchen cabinets until he'd found the half-empty bottle of scotch that had remained untouched since John's stag night. 

He'd brushed the dust from the cap, poured himself a glass, downed it in two large swallows. Then he'd repeated the motions twice more, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Then, empty bottle abandoned on the kitchen counter, he'd taken out his phone. With his voice slightly loose and slurred from drink, he'd put a call through to Ella Thompson's office and booked himself an appointment. 

Things had gone badly, for a while. 

They were better now. 

Better than he'd hoped they could be, if he were completely honest. 

He dressed, left the house. The sky was slate grey. 

He walked, kept an unhurried pace. After a time, he looked up. He was not particularly surprised to find that his route had taken him to the London Aquarium. 

He went inside through the main entrance, paid his fee, spent an hour meandering through the various exhibits. Blue water rippled all around. It was peaceful, he thought. For some people. Most people, probably. All of that cool soothing blue. 

They had replaced the flooring where Mary had died. He stood looking down at the ground, his hands in his pockets. Thought about how differently that night could have gone.

Then he turned, made his way back towards the exits. His steps were heavy. 

The bright midday sky was disorienting, and it took him a moment of blinking and squinting in the daylight to register Mycroft standing just outside the main doors, watching the crowd with a pained expression on his face.

"Ah," Mycroft said, setting eyes on him. "I suspected I might find you here." 

He scoffed, looked away. "You have me under surveillance."

Mycroft cleared his throat, fell into step beside him as they made their way across the bridge, skirting around groups of tourists. 

"I feel that I owe you an apology," Mycroft said. 

"Several, actually. What are you apologizing for this time?" 

"Carl Powers." 

Sherlock stopped walking. 

"You do remember the name, I gather." 

"Of course I remember the name." 

"Yes," Mycroft said, his voice strained. "Of course."

"Moriarty murdered him when he was just a child," Sherlock said. "Unless you've come to tell me that I made that up in my head as well." 

"No," Mycroft said. "You didn't make it up." 

Sherlock began walking again, picking up his pace, dodging through foot traffic. 

"You came to me first," Mycroft said. He was slightly out of breath. "With your suspicions." 

"Yes," Sherlock said, smiling tightly. "And you told me I was imagining it. Does this conversation have a point?" 

"The _point,_ " Mycroft said, "Is that I thought—I assumed—that your fixation on that boy's death was simply a manifestation of your memory of Victor Trevor. Mistakenly, of course." 

"Ah. Reassuring to know you've a history of sound judgment." 

"Sherlock." 

He stopped walking again, turned back. Mycroft's brow was pinched. 

"Please," Mycroft said. "Try to appreciate how it looked from my perspective. You, fixating on a news report involving a child's drowning." 

Sherlock sucked in a breath, pressed his lips together.

"I thought I was helping you. I only ever wanted to help you." 

He did not know what to say to that. He disliked when Mycroft spoke to him gently; without the buffer of antipathy he was powerless against the memory of his brother loosening his tie, squaring his shoulders, offering himself up as a sacrifice. 

"All these years, Sherlock. I've never given you enough credit. I let you believe you were stupid, that you were—inferior in some way." 

"Why are you speaking to me like this? Are you dying?" 

He huffed out a laugh, shook his head. "No, not as far as I'm aware. But it occurred to me that, on this day in particular, it might be necessary for you to hear." 

"All lives end," Sherlock murmured.

"All hearts are broken," Mycroft agreed, going through the motions, their old refrain. "Caring is not an advantage. Except, it appears, in the end—it was. And for that, I am deeply sorry." 

Sherlock swallowed. Blinked. Opened his mouth, shut it again. 

"Am I to believe you took yourself to the aquarium today as some form of penance?" 

Mary, gasping on the floor, her skin cast in blue, her blood dark on the ground. John's face, his _face,_ so much rage and pain as to render him unrecognizable. And him, standing, still standing. There with his hand outstretched, useless, frozen and ineffectual. Stunned and gaping. 

"You've nothing to atone for," Mycroft said, quietly. 

"You're in no position to make that decision." 

"You called John Watson your family." 

Sherlock tucked in his chin. "Yes." 

"Then I believe that today is a day to be spent with family. Don't you?" 

*

His hand trembled as he reached out to knock on John's door, and he drew it back, slipped it into his pocket. 

The door creaked open and for a moment, a fleeting moment, he was lost in time and it was not John at the door but Molly, Molly with Rosie tucked tiny and helpless in her arms, Molly with red-rimmed eyes and downturned lips, Molly with reluctant harsh words on her tongue. 

_Anyone but you._

His vision cleared and it was John, John at the door. John with tired eyes and his brows lifting in—surprise? He did not look entirely displeased. 

"Hi," John said. He smiled, a little self-consciously. "This is a surprise. You don't—you don't come by very often. Is everything—um—"

John, squinting into the sun at the cemetery in Cardiff, Sherlock still raw and half-dazed from his conversation with Gloria Trevor. The wonder of him, there in that moment, sunlight glinting in his hair, a hesitant smile on his face. The words he'd spoken—

"I thought you could use a friend," Sherlock said. He cleared his throat, ducked his head. Waited. 

"Yeah," John said, blowing out a breath of air through his teeth. The nervous false cheer fell away from his face, replaced by something not quite as easily read. "Yes. Actually. I could." 

Sherlock went through the door, hesitant. He breathed in. The house smelled of John, of Rosie, of the tinned soup he'd heated for lunch. Of cleaning products and antibacterial wipes. An overlarge bouquet of flowers on the table in the kitchen, perfumed, funereal. The blooms were fresh. A recent delivery, likely from someone who felt the need to memorialize the day but was not terribly close to John. 

Most likely a relative. His sister, perhaps. 

There was nothing of Mary in the air. Not so much as a fleeting whiff of Clair de la Lune.

"Sherlock," John said. 

He turned, startled. 

John was in the hall, Rosie in his arms.

He instinctively reached out, just as she did the same. 

"Hello, Watson," he said, taking her into his arms and bouncing her a bit, voice low. 

She was sleepy eyed and bleary, clearly just up from a nap. Still, she grinned. Grabbed at his hair. 

"Sit down," John said. 

He looked over at the sofa. 

_Come back with me,_ John had said in the back seat of the car, warm and drowsy against the leather. 

_No,_ Sherlock had said. 

John's house made him uncomfortable. It always had, even before Mary was gone. 

He could barely bring himself to sit down. Hadn't, in fact, the last time he'd darkened John's door, when Mary's second message had appeared in the post. He hadn't even taken off his coat. 

But Rosie was in his arms, growing heavy and languid with sleep, and John was looking at him expectantly, and—

He sat. Stiffly. Hesitantly. 

The couch was John's. The pillows were Mary's. Decorative touches, bright, cheerful. Something that the kind of person Mary had wanted to be might have liked. 

She'd been no more suited to quiet domesticity than John. He wondered if John knew that; if either of them, really, ever knew how hard the other had tried to squeeze into a mould that just didn't quite fit. 

He'd tried to help, in his way. He had offered them distractions. He knew quite a lot about needing distractions. 

There was tea in front of him. Steaming, hot. John on the sofa next to him, his own mug in hand. Time had passed, then. He'd slipped away.

John did not seem overly fussed by it. He sipped his tea, looked steadily at Sherlock. His eyes were tired. 

"You liked her," John said. 

Sherlock blinked, frowned. "What?"

"Mary." 

"Oh." It seemed an odd statement. Of course he had liked Mary. He thought he'd made that clear. "Yes." 

John took another sip of tea, a too-large swallow this time, and grimaced. "I didn't." 

"Don't say ridiculous things. Of course you did," Sherlock said. Even as Eurus piped up in his mind: _He loved her, but he hated her too._

John tipped his head, chagrined, agreeing. "I'm not sure what I'm meant to be feeling today." 

"I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask." 

John barked out a sharp laugh, clapped him on the back. He was slow in taking his hand away. 

"You liked her," he said again. "For real. It wasn't an act. It wasn't a trick." 

"John," Sherlock said. 

"I never stopped being angry with her," he said. "But you—you never really got angry in the first place. Did you?" 

Sherlock lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. He had not had much time to be angry. He'd been shocked, and then he'd been dying. And then he'd been busy with other things.

"Why not?" 

Sherlock looked down at his hands. "I understood her motives." 

"She almost killed you." 

"She didn't want me dead," he said. "But, on balance, losing me was preferable to losing you." His lip curled and he blinked, hard. "Not difficult to understand." 

"And that's—that's all it takes for you? Understanding? That's tantamount to forgiveness?" 

"Little point in holding grudges," he said. "A great deal of conflict arises from lack of understanding, wouldn't you agree?" 

John laughed, a dry, nervous sound. He looked away. "I don't think I work that way." 

Sherlock shrugged, unconcerned. Sipped his tea. Rosie breathed deeply against his chest, a warm, steady weight. 

"That doesn't bother you?" 

"Should it?" 

"They say we look back on the dead with rose-tinted glasses." 

"With what?" 

John laughed again, this sound more genuine, fond. "It means we tend to romanticize. To overlook flaws." 

"Ah."

"I know that right after, that's—that's what I did. I had a picture in my head, of Mary. How she—well. Not how she was, exactly. How I wanted her to be. Or maybe how she wanted to be. I don't know. I talked to her. She talked to me." 

_I carried you in my head for two years,_ he did not say. _You whispered advice, you scolded me when I showed off. You comforted me, when I was bleeding, when I was strung up from the ceiling in Serbia and half-mad from lack of sleep. But it wasn't you, not really. Not entirely. I never quite got it right. I never quite got you right. And by the time I realized how badly I wanted to, it was much too late._

"I think that's—not uncommon," he hedged, finally.

"I was so angry with her, Sherlock. I was so angry, and then she died." 

"I know." 

"No," John shook his head. "No. I lied to her. I cheated on her. And it wasn't because—I didn't want—I was flattered. By the attention. Anyone would have been. But that wasn't why I did it." 

Sherlock shifted in his seat, just slightly, not wanting to disturb Rosie. 

_He liked the danger of it, you know, even thinking about cheating on someone who could kill him. It gave him a thrill._

"She had so many secrets from me," John said. His voice was choked. "I wanted some of my own. And if that isn't the _stupidest,_ the most unforgivable excuse—" 

"John—"

"Sherlock," John pushed on. "Some things are unforgivable." 

"Yes," Sherlock said. "Some things are. But not the things you're speaking of." 

John laughed again, the sound thick, wet. Disbelieving. He sniffed, hard. Looked away.

Sherlock hesitated, his hand twitching. Rosie slept on, nestled against his chest. 

_Don't you dare._

He shut his eyes, lifted his hand. Set it gently on John's shoulder. 

They did this now. They touched. For comfort. He could do this. He had done this. He wondered how many times he'd have to remind himself of the fact before it stuck. 

John breathed out. Leaned a little into the weight of his hand. 

After a moment, he shifted, brought his own hand up to cover Sherlock's. One brief squeeze of a warm dry palm. 

"Thank you," he said. 

*

_You know what this means._

_We have to tell him._

He opened his eyes and was a child again, lying in bed, the night pressing close through the window. 

His bedroom was small, cosy, familiar. The scratched wooden desk against the wall. The bookshelf. The periodic table, pinned up over his bed. 

The house was silent around him, but he knew without thinking about it that it had been raised voices that had awakened him.

His parents did not fight often. But when they did, they often did so under the cover of night. 

He sat up. The sheets dragged against his skin and he kicked at them. 

For a moment, there in the dark, his room was unfamiliar. Bigger. High ceilings overhead, far out of reach. A different bed, firmer mattress underneath him. 

He lunged for the lamp on his nightstand, switched it on. 

The room was as it should be. Small. Cosy. Familiar. 

Boring. 

A creak outside the door, a gentle knock, and then Mummy was easing her way in, her lips pressed together in an apologetic frown.

"Did we wake you?" 

"No," he said. And then. "Yes." And then, because he was half asleep, and his Mummy's presence did something to ease the strange shifting terror that had come with his disorientation: "Did we ever live someplace else?" 

She hesitated, looked hard at him. 

"Why do you ask?"

"I woke up," he said. "And my room was different." 

"You were dreaming," she said softly.

He shrugged. He did not know if he'd been dreaming or not. It seemed likely, now, with the golden lamplight bathing the walls and his mother's reassuring presence. 

"I spoke with Mycroft," she said, approaching his bed. "He told me you called him." 

He rolled his eyes, flopped back against the sheets. His fleeting fear had melted away, leaving him prickly, annoyed. _Mycroft._ Of _course_ he'd gone and opened his mouth. 

"Said you'd been focusing on something in the papers. Something about a boy drowning?" 

"Carl Powers," he said. His voice sounded petulant to his own ears. Bloody _Mycroft._

"Did you know him?" 

"No, I saw it in the papers. It happened in London."

"Sherlock," she said, and she hesitated. There was something terribly conflicted in her expression. She put out her hand, touched his forehead.

He frowned, waited. 

After a moment, she let her hand fall away. She shut her eyes. "My sweet boy." 

"I'm not sweet," he said. He turned his head away. 

"Go back to sleep," she said. 

He shut his eyes. 

*

He woke, bewildered, in his own bed. Caught, for a fleeting moment, between past and present. 

Early morning sunlight played against his ceiling and he relaxed back against the pillows, listened to the familiar sounds below his window.

He stood, stretched. Hesitated before slipping on his dressing gown and going down the hall to the kitchen. 

A fresh pot of tea stood on the table. Still hot. 

The flat was empty. There was no reason for it to be anything but empty. 

_Mad. Charming. Likeable. Unsafe._

He drank his tea. Then he showered, dressed. 

The car arrived promptly at eleven. He was waiting for it, case in hand, and stepped outside before it had even come to a full stop by the kerb. 

Mycroft raised his brows as Sherlock slid into the back seat. 

"I can't recall the last time you deigned to be punctual. What's the occasion?"

"I want to make a stop on the way." 

The car slipped through traffic. Slowed as it reached their destination. Mycroft shifted in his seat, made a soft scoffing sound. 

"Feeling peckish?"

"It's not for me." 

*

"Chips?" Eurus asked.

"Gone cold, I'm afraid," he said. 

She stepped up to the glass, picked up the little carton he'd pushed through. Studied it. 

"They don't give us chips here." 

"What do they give you?"

"A complete and balanced diet that meets all nutritional requirements." 

"That sounds very dull." 

Something on her face, the faintest flicker of amusement. She lifted a chip to her mouth, ate it slowly. Shut her eyes. 

He shifted where he stood, glanced back at the camera on the wall. Mycroft was watching, no doubt. 

"You brought me a treat," she said, when she had chewed and swallowed the first chip. She set the carton back down. "You must want something." 

"I don't want anything from you," he said.

She stared back at him, her gaze steady, level. She stared for a long time. 

Then she picked up her violin.

*

It had gone dark by the time they returned to London. His neck was tender, his bowing arm sore. They had played for hours. 

The car left him at the kerb. He unlocked the door, went up the stairs to his empty flat. 

It wasn't empty. 

John was in his chair, hair limned in soft lamplight. He had a book in his hands, Rosie cradled in his arms, her head pillowed on his chest. His head was tilted back, eyes closed. They breathed in tandem, deep, even breaths. 

Sherlock's hands trembled. He set his case down on the ground. 

John blinked awake, a quick jerk of motion that gentled into something softer, deliberate, as he gathered his bearings. Rosie slept on. 

"Hi," John whispered. 

Sherlock felt a smile pull at his lips. He nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak. 

They looked at each other, the silence between them comfortable. Warm. 

"I brought takeaway," John said. "Might have gone cold. We can microwave it." 

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder towards the kitchen. There was a plastic bag on the table. The sight of it made his chest feel like cracking open. He did not quite know why. 

He was expected to speak. That was obvious, from the expression on John's face. 

He inclined his head towards the television, quiet and dark in the corner of the room. "Find something on the telly?" And then, even though he'd surely regret it: "Your choice." 

"Yeah," John said. He shut his eyes, nodded. Kissed Rosie on the crown of her head as he eased himself out of the chair. Brushed past Sherlock on his way to the sofa, trailing their warm familiar scent. 

Sherlock breathed in. Their air filled his lungs, seemed to radiate warmth through his entire frame. Their presence filled his flat, made it feel like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting the occasional outtake from early drafts on my [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-outtake), if anyone's interested in reading further.


	7. Still

*

"People do get so sentimental about their pets." 

The air was warm, humid, thick with the stink of chlorine. 

He breathed in, conscious of everything, every detail. The gentle lap of pool water against concrete, his own elevated respiration, the sharp adrenaline sweat smell rising from John. And Moriarty, of course, a blank slate, impossible to read. Frightening in his calm, terrifying in his mania.

Moriarty was smiling, a sly smile, his pitch dark eyes twinkling a bit. He was smiling like he had a secret, like he was in on some particularly delicious joke. 

And John, frightened but stoic, eyes alert, waiting for a signal. Poised. Loyal, _touchingly loyal_ , and likely about to die for it. 

It hadn't occurred to him. 

It hadn't _occurred to him_ that he could lose John to this. That Moriarty would escalate in this way. He'd taken it as a game, an electrifying intellectual flirtation that held few real-life consequences. He'd been stupid, terribly shortsighted, and now—

He shut his eyes. 

"Sher-lock," Moriarty said, his tone scolding, sing-song. 

He opened his eyes in a padded cell, filthy walls climbing high overhead. It was dark, damp. Water dripped, maddeningly, somewhere just out of sight, striking the ground in rhythmic wet bursts. 

"Did you really not know?" Moriarty taunted from where he huddled on the floor, swaddled in filthy restraints. His skin smelled sour, the stench seeping into the very walls. 

Sherlock folded his hands in front of him, looked down. Kept his face impassive.

"Oh, come on," Moriarty said. "You can talk to me-e-e." 

"No," Sherlock said. 

"I laughed at you, you know," he stood up, chains dragging, leaned his back against the rotting wall. "You thought you were so clever. You thought you were my equal. And it turned out you couldn't even keep up with your own poor brain, let alone _mine._ I went home and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed." 

"What do you want?"

"You came to me, Sherlock. It's you that must want something." He huffed a heavy sigh, annoyed, exaggerated. "You only visit when you _want_ something." 

He was silent.

"I thought it was so perfect. The pool, the water, your little friend," Moriarty said. "So loyal. So ready to die for you. Such a good pet." 

"Stop it." 

"You stop it," he taunted, his voice lilting upwards, childlike, snotty. "She told me all about it, you know. Redbeard. Adorable, Sherlock, truly. You and your pets. You found a good one in John. He was ready to die for you that night. He didn't even hesitate." He paused, tilted his head considering. "Hmm… I bet he'd hesitate now." 

He turned towards the door, found nothing but stained white padding. He put his hands out, frantic now, dragging them over stiff fabric, searching for a seam. 

"Oh," Moriarty said, giggling. "It's like the Hotel California, didn't you know? You can check out any time you want, but you can never _leave._ " 

He shut his eyes, breathed in the heavy sour air, counted to five. Opened his eyes. 

Eurus was standing where Moriarty had been moments before. She was clad in the same filthy clothes, wrapped in the same soiled restraints. Chains dragged on the floor. 

"I'll burn the heart out of you," she said in Moriarty's voice, staring at him. Her face was flat, expressionless. 

He sniffed the air. Smoke had begun to curl out of the padding behind her, thin dark tendrils climbing towards the ceiling. A yellow flame licked upwards, spread, grew. 

"Curiosity killed the cat," she said as the fire flickered at the edge of her hair, ignited. She smiled. "But satisfaction brought him back." 

*

He sat up gasping, _gasping_ , drenched in sweat. The bedclothes clung to him and he wrenched them away. 

His bedroom was dark, still, quiet save for his harsh breathing. It was early. Through the window, the sky had only faintly begun to lighten. 

The dream was already beginning to recede, leaving him uneasy, restless. He had dreamed ceaselessly since the events at Sherrinford, since Musgrave. But those dreams had been little more than memories, taken down from the shelf for endless rounds of examination and study. Nothing at all like this one. 

A lifetime ago, he would occasionally notice the sounds of John suffering through a restless night in his room at the top of the stairs, would subsequently pass long and sleepless hours with John in the sitting room, all soft lamplight and tea and books and crap telly. They had never spoken about it. 

There would be no reason to speak about it now. John was not there to notice anything amiss. 

He showered, dressed, went out into the kitchen as the sun began to edge upwards. 

There was no tea. 

Mrs Hudson, it appeared, had not accounted for nightmares. 

He scrolled through his Twitter account on his phone, ignored the sitting room. It was dangerous to let his mind wander there, still so close to unsettled sleep. Easy to slip. 

He had to be able to trust his mind, his senses. It was all he had.

Less than fifteen minutes later, he heard Mrs Hudson's delicate tread on the stairs. 

"Oh," she said, surprised. "You're never up this early." 

"Well, you know what they say. Early birds. Worms." He frowned. "Something." 

She set the tea tray down on the table. Looked at him, her brow heavy with concern. 

"Are you all right, dear?" 

"Of course," he said. "Why wouldn't I be?" 

She did not answer, but patted him gently on the shoulder before leaving. Her palm was soft, warm. 

He drank his tea. Beams of early morning sunlight began to creep through the windows. 

On the table in front of him, his phone buzzed. 

_Rosie's sitter has the flu_

He frowned at the screen for a moment. 

_I hate to ask, but would you mind?_

And then, immediately:

_Half the staff at the surgery have already called out sick_

It took him a full seven seconds to realize what, exactly, was being asked of him. Then he hurriedly tapped out an answer.

_Of course._

Downstairs, the door rattled open. Heavy footsteps ascended in a rush. He stood from the table, dressing gown flaring around his ankles, finger hovering over the send button. 

John pushed through the door, harried, lugging Rosie in her little carrier. 

Sherlock looked down at the phone. He had not yet hit send. Surely he hadn't taken _that_ long to process John's initial request.

"I'm sorry," John said, a little out of breath. He shook his head, looking oddly embarrassed. "I was already in a cab on the way when I texted you. I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't. Thinking. Obviously. I just panicked, and you were the first person I thought of. You don't have to feel obligated to—" 

Sherlock blinked, his mind snagging helplessly on _you were the first person I thought of._ He shook himself clear, held up his phone, _Of course_ floating unsent on the screen. 

"Oh," John said. He breathed out, through his nose, his posture losing some of its stiffness. "Right. Good. I—uh. I called to tell them I couldn't make it, but they're short staffed today and they begged me—but I don't have to. Christ. I should have a contingency plan for things like this, obviously it's going to happen from time to time, but—" 

"John," Sherlock said again, stepping forward, taking the carrier from his hand. He smiled down at Rosie, who was bright-eyed in the early morning, her face lit up like sunshine. "It's fine. I can—" he cleared his throat, looked away. "I can be your contingency plan."

"All right," John said. He still looked uncomfortable. 

Rosie was fussing in her carrier, clearly eager to escape her bonds and explore the world. She strained one chubby arm towards the sitting room, vaguely in the direction of the mantel and its collection of oddities.

She was walking now, unsteady and in need of assistance at times, but mobile enough to satisfy her own curiosities. It added a new dimension to their routine trips around the room, and he'd begun leaving things of interest in low places for her to discover on her own.

All of a sudden, the sitting room no longer seemed a minefield, but instead a source of wonder. 

"We'll be fine," he said. 

*

He spent more than an hour one sunny afternoon holding out paint swatches to determine which colours Rosie reacted most favorably to. Carefully noted her responses. 

He had John's old room repainted. Bought a cot, and a little changing table, and a chest of drawers. Just in case. 

It made sense, he told himself. Now that John felt comfortable using Sherlock as a contingency plan when his sitter fell through or needed a day off (and it had happened, and it did happen, and it would continue to happen.) One never knew what circumstances might arise. Best she have a comfortable place to rest her head, if necessary. 

He elected not to mention it. 

*

"Tell me about the padded cell," he said to Mycroft over the whir of propellers, Sherrinford falling away below them. 

His violin was stowed back in its case, tucked between his knees. Eurus had not had words for him this visit, had instead played long and slow and sad, her back to the glass. He had, after a time, turned his back as well, joined in.

"I suppose it was only a matter of time until we came to that," Mycroft said. There was something heavy and resigned in his voice.

"So it _is_ a memory." 

"Not exactly," Mycroft said. 

He frowned, looked out the window at the churning sea below. Waited. 

"It is a memory, in a way. The way that Redbeard was a memory." 

His breath caught and he kept his face averted. His voice, when he spoke, was weaker than he would have liked. "Ah." 

"Do you remember anything at all about that time, Sherlock? After Musgrave Hall burned?" 

"We've been over this," he said, frustrated.

"Yes. I suppose we have." 

Silence fell, but for the steady beat of the propellers, the whine of the engine. 

"Up until that point, one could say we had something of an unconventional upbringing."

"I hadn't noticed." 

Mycroft cleared his throat, shifted in his seat. "After Musgrave burned, after Eurus was taken away—that all changed." 

"You don't say." 

Mycroft did not rise to the bait. "We were enrolled in formal schooling for the first time. It was an adjustment for both of us, but one I was able to make without much difficulty. You—" 

"I'm not entirely addled," Sherlock said, irritated. 

"No," Mycroft said, and he seemed genuinely sorry for a moment. "I don't mean to dredge up unpleasant memories. But before that time, you had always been social, Sherlock. Very social. You made friends wherever we went, latched on to anyone who paid you the slightest bit of attention. That all changed."

He looked away, uncomfortable. That part of himself was gone, a black hole in his memory, bottomless and frighteningly, dizzyingly empty. 

"You shut down, Sherlock. You were distraught. Plagued with nightmares. We feared you might never recover." 

"Yes, of course. Poor Sherlock, his mind is much too fragile to handle the truth." 

"For God's _sake._ " 

Sherlock looked back at his brother in surprise. Mycroft was rigid in his seat, nostrils flaring. When he spoke again, his voice was brittle, matter-of-fact. "Eurus was institutionalized. Our parents went to visit her on six separate occasions. I accompanied them on three of those visits. We all decided, at the time, that it would be best for you to remain at home." 

"And?" 

"And nothing," Mycroft said. "We failed to take into account the rather… expansive nature of your imagination. You weren't allowed to see Eurus, and so your mind decided—with the help of input from no shortage of lurid books and television, I'm sure—what her new accommodations were like."

"The cell—" 

"She was never in a padded cell, Sherlock," he said. "Her accommodations were sparse, but comfortable, and entirely befitting a child of five. Once again, in an effort to shield you from harm, it appears that I have inadvertently caused it." 

Sherlock looked down at the violin case resting between his knees, the bag dusty and battered with use. Then he looked back up at Mycroft, whose face was pinched. He nodded, once, turned back towards the window. 

"When Uncle Rudy and I made the decision to transfer her care to Sherrinford, we agreed that it would be—best. For everyone. If she were simply removed from the equation. A fire was staged. Her records were altered. Mummy and Daddy were, of course, upset. Though I don't believe I'm lying when I say that there was a measure of relief in that guilt. But you, Sherlock—you woke up screaming for two straight weeks. Vivid dreams. Of Eurus in a padded cell, consumed in flames. Almost certainly fueled in part by your very real memories of Musgrave burning."

He shut his eyes, the ghost of something tickling at his consciousness. His own voice, young, high with fright: _Her hair was burning!_

"And then, like a switch had been flipped, you stopped," Mycroft said. "You seemed to forget all about her. You seemed, in fact, to forget all about everything that had happened." 

"And that was that." 

"You built the walls, brother. I only helped to reinforce them." 

He nodded, breathed out. The seat was stiff against his back. He wanted Baker Street, comfortable and warm, Rosie underfoot and John grumbling good-naturedly from his chair. 

But that wasn't his to want. 

"You were always my priority, Sherlock." 

"Yes," Sherlock said, quiet. "And perhaps that was part of the problem." 

They rode in silence for some time. As the helicopter began its slow descent towards London, Mycroft slipped his phone out of his pocket, looked at the screen, made a pained noise. 

"What is it this time? Another war?" 

"No," he said. "It appears that Mummy has discovered Facebook."

*

Baker Street was not empty. 

John was in his chair, pecking away at something on his laptop. Rosie in her pen, papers spread out carefully beneath her and taped to the floor, her entire front a mess of vivid colour. 

He stopped in the doorway, still holding his violin case, stared. 

John looked up. 

"Hi," he said. A smile curled at the edges of his mouth. "Your mum's on Facebook." 

Sherlock blinked. Blinked again. "Yes. I—I know." 

John followed his gaze to Rosie, looked a bit abashed. "Finger paint. She's, um. Quite the artist." He half-smiled, shook his head. "Also, it's held her attention for the last hour, which has to be some kind of record." 

Rosie looked up, concentration broken for the first time since he'd arrived. She squealed as she spotted Sherlock, clapped her hands together, smearing thick globs of paint between her fingers. 

"I put newspaper down," John said. "And plastic underneath. There shouldn't be any mess on the floor—" 

Sherlock ignored him, went over to Rosie. He set his violin case down, crouched to look at the muddied smears she'd spread all over a piece of thick white paper. She looked up at him, grinned, and then slapped her hands down into a puddle of bright purple paint.

"Lovely," he said. "I think we'll have this framed." 

"What?" John looked flummoxed.

"When it dries, of course," Sherlock said. He shrugged out of his coat and suit jacket, scooped up Rosie, heedless of the mess against his shirt. 

She babbled something that might have been an attempt at his name, burrowed her head against his neck. 

"Your shirt," John said. 

"I have others." 

John stared at him, his face difficult to read. His eyes were bright, searching. 

"FACE!" Rosie demanded, and he dutifully walked her to the wall so she could inspect the yellow smiley face. 

It did not trouble him, that face with its familiar-yet-different smile, when he looked at it with her. She loved it, the way she loved the bat in its little glass case, the pinned beetles, the skull. The way she loved all of the things that hadn't always been his.

She stretched out an arm, and, before he could react, slapped one wet purple hand against the wallpaper, leaving a perfect thick handprint just to the right of the grinning face. 

"Shit," John said, springing into action, fumbling to dampen a towel under the tap. "Shit, the instructions said not to get this on wallpaper. Sorry—" 

Sherlock waved John off as he approached, stepped up onto the couch cushions. Rosie giggled as he held her out towards the wall, slapped her hands against the paper again. Two more prints against the bold pattern, a bright vivid purple. 

"What are you--?"

Sherlock ignored him, stepped down, carried Rosie back to the mess she'd made in her pen. He looked down at her, her blond curls matted to one side of her head, her shirt stained with colourful splotches, a dried purple smear on her nose. His chest squeezed. 

"I vote we continue with the purple," he said, solemn, and Rosie nodded. He picked up the tube of paint, squeezed it out onto the newsprint. Lowered her so she could coat her hands. 

"Sherlock," John said. 

He considered, then dropped his own hand, the one not supporting Rosie, into the paint as well. It squelched, rudely, and she giggled. He carried her back over to the wall, bouncing her on his hip.

"Sherlock," John said again. 

He stepped right back up onto the sofa, and this time Rosie didn't hesitate, laughing madly as she pressed purple handprints against the paper. He grinned down at her, added his own. 

"What are you _doing?_ "

["Redecorating," Sherlock said, turning back. ](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/160314006153/redecorating-inspired-by-the-brilliant-s4-and)

John stared at him from where he stood, brows climbing ever higher. He looked from the wall, decorated now with a smattering of purple handprints, some tiny, some large. Looked back at the mess of discarded paints in Rosie's pen. 

"Go on," Sherlock said. 

And John dropped the towel on the ground, took three quick steps over to the paints, loaded up his own hands with purple. Came back, stepped up onto the sofa, wobbling slightly for balance. Looked once more at Sherlock, at Rosie, at the wall, before shaking his head and pressing his own hands against the wallpaper. 

Two perfect prints. 

*

"What's this, then?" John asked, later, as they sat on the sofa beneath the drying handprints, empty takeout containers spread across the coffee table. He held out his phone. 

Sherlock sighed, leaned forward to look. 

Facebook, of course. His mother had uploaded a truly appalling amount of photographs of himself and Mycroft at varying ages, and John had ignored the telly entirely in favor of scrolling through them and chuckling. 

The picture that had caught John's eye was not yet another excavated relic from his youth, as he'd been expecting. Instead, it was a fairly recent snap of his parents, beaming in the midst of a small group of people. Their faces were pale, washed-out from the camera flash. 

They—and everyone else in frame with them—were wearing plaid shirts, jeans, boots. Cowboy hats. Clad, head to toe, in kitschy American-west style. 

"Ah, a souvenir of their time on the competitive line-dancing circuit," he sighed. Looked away. 

Rosie was back in her pen, warm and sleepy, freshly bathed and changed into clean clothes. He considered the room upstairs, all set up, as yet unused. Shied away from the thought immediately. John would be leaving soon. No sense springing something like that on him now. 

John made a sound, a sort of strangled half-laugh. "Their _what?_ " 

"Please don't make me repeat that." 

"Oh, no, I think that's definitely something that needs repeating." 

"It's really not." 

John said something in response, but Sherlock was no longer listening, his eyes caught on the screen. He snatched the phone out of John's hand. 

"Hey—" John said, grabbing for it. 

There was a woman standing just behind and to the right of his mother. She had a cowboy hat on her bouncy blond curls, a bottle of beer held jauntily in one hand. Her skin was tanned, almost orange against the red plaid of her shirt. She was winking, a staged and flirty pose for the camera. 

Eurus. 

She was almost unrecognizable. She hadn't just altered her appearance, she'd altered her entire demeanor, her entire bearing. 

She had fooled him. She had fooled John, twice. She had fooled Mycroft.

And, apparently, she had fooled his parents. 

Well. They _had_ thought her dead at the time. 

He handed John his phone back without a word. Stood from the sofa. Went down the stairs and out the door, let it swing shut behind him. 

Baker Street was alive with traffic, sights and sounds and smells of London at night. Data, assaulting his senses from every angle. He was paralyzed, stunned and gasping, passerby veering around him on the pavement. 

_Where else had she gone, over the years? What else had she done?_

The door creaked behind him. Hesitant footsteps. John. 

"That's her, isn't it?" John asked. Quiet, his voice meant for Sherlock's ears alone.

"Yes." 

"I can barely even recognize her," John said. "Even knowing. She's—um. Very good at that." 

"Yes." 

They stood quietly for a moment, the pair of them, adrift on the pavement amidst a sea of pedestrians. 

The paralyzing crush of data slowed, receded. He was aware only of John, of his quiet, steady breathing. Of his shoulder, brushing ever so slightly against his own. He shut his eyes, measured his own breaths against John's. Calmed. 

*

"Is she allowed photographs?"

Mycroft shifted in his seat, narrowed his eyes. "I don't expect she'd have much interest in keepsakes." 

"Not what I asked," Sherlock said. 

"She is permitted photographs or artwork. Clear plastic frames. No glass." 

"Seems a pointless restriction. If she wanted to fashion a weapon, the violin is more than ample—" 

"Protocol, Sherlock. It exists for a reason." 

He nodded, hesitated for a moment before taking his phone from his pocket. Held it out. 

Mycroft squinted at the screen. His eyesight was deteriorating. He'd need to make peace with his vanity and acquire a pair of reading glasses sooner rather than later. 

"Yes," he said, bored. "I've seen these. I daresay I wish I hadn't." 

Sherlock did not pull the phone back. Waited.

"I assume you have some reason for—" Mycroft stopped speaking abruptly. He frowned, reached for the phone, lifted it closer to his face. Looked up. He had gone quite pale. 

"Something else you missed, I assume." 

Mycroft cleared his throat. "So it would appear." 

He set the phone down on the desk. Sherlock took it, slipped it back into his pocket. 

"She didn't harm them," he said. 

Mycroft looked sharply at him. 

"She had ample opportunity. They'd never have suspected." 

"Perhaps she was interrupted," Mycroft said. 

"No," Sherlock said. He thought about Eurus behind the glass, strange and forlorn and dangerous, an exotic specimen, not safe for the world. "She was curious." 

*

"Another treat?" Eurus asked, watching him from across the room as he slid the parcel through the little door. 

He didn't answer, busied himself unpacking his violin, rosining his bow. He set it against his shoulder and began to play. 

She stopped, her hand outstretched. Listened. 

"This is you," she said, after a time. 

He inclined his head in agreement, went on playing. 

"Recent," she said. 

He tipped his head again, the movement slight. It seemed to satisfy her, and she went back to her package. 

He'd wrapped it in plain brown paper. She tore into it, stared down. 

He'd had the photo printed, encased in a thick plastic frame that had passed rigorous inspection by Sherrinford's staff. 

He lifted his bow from the strings, silence falling. He watched her carefully. 

"I had to leave the trophy at the airport," she said after a time, not looking up. "Would have given me away if I'd returned with it. Even Mycroft might have noticed _that._ "

It was the first time she'd spoken his name. She did so without any particular venom. No more than Sherlock used on a daily basis, in any case.

He glanced surreptitiously at the camera. 

"Yes," he said. "I suspect he might have." 

_Where else have you gone? What else have you done?_

He had so many questions. He forced himself to remain still. 

She regarded the photograph for an interminable amount of time, quiet. Then she set it carefully on the squat grey table next to her bed. Picked up her violin. 

*

John was waiting for him at Baker Street when he returned. 

John, it seemed, was always waiting for him at Baker Street on the days he traveled to Sherrinford. Some silent agreement, perhaps, a social contract he was not quite aware of having entered into. 

But he was grateful.

"Was it all right?" John asked, tentative. 

Sherlock looked at him, unsure of how he was expected to answer. 

"It is what it is," he said, finally.

John held his gaze, lips pressed together. He nodded. Seemed to cast about for something to change the subject.

"We took the tube here," he said after a pause, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Realized I didn't have enough on me for a cab, and—she didn't cry, Sherlock. Not once." 

Sherlock glanced over at Rosie, happily ensconced in the midst of her books and toys. Raised his brows. 

"I guess she grew out of it," John said. "Or something. My God. You have no idea." 

Sherlock, who had spent several long afternoons with his own ears ensconced in noise-cancelling headphones, serenely listening to violin concertos whilst touring the entirety of the London Underground with Rosie in tow, merely smiled.

*

A case of art theft threatened to undermine everything. 

When Rosie had first been born, John issued a firm declaration: _No taking her on cases._

That kind of blanket statement had been patently absurd. Sherlock had known it, Mary had known it, only John had remained stubborn enough to stick by his words. And even he'd wavered, eventually. Of course he had. Because it was absurd.

So he'd amended his rules, a bit, to: _Rosie can come along while evidence-gathering on cold cases only._ And then, he'd eventually added: _And evidence-gathering on active cases, but only in child-friendly public areas._

But that had worn thin, after a time, and so eventually it had become: _Rosie can come to initial crime-scene assessments, but only for burglaries and non-violent crimes._ Which had turned into: _Any crime, so long as there's no gore._

Sherlock had suggested a blindfold, for instances of gore, but John had rejected that offer out of hand. 

The rule of: _Absolutely no chases or pursuits of any kind_ was, he had to admit, reasonable, and he saw no reason to argue it. At least not until she was old enough to execute a proper tackle. Which, considering walking was still proving something of a challenge, promised not to be for some time. 

But this—

Well. 

Lestrade had requested his assistance on a case involving a painting (of middling quality) that had gone missing from a trendy gallery shortly after selling for an exorbitant sum of money. The gallery was pressing for a resolution, and Sherlock had eventually agreed to speak with the artist himself, in the hopes of identifying a lead (or several) that New Scotland Yard had missed. 

John had been there, at Baker Street, when he'd taken Lestrade's call. 

John had been sitting on the sofa with Rosie, the two of them absently sharing a bowl of chopped fruit, Rosie's fingers and cheeks sticky with juice in a way that should have been revolting, not adorable, and which Sherlock found inconveniently adorable anyway. 

And Sherlock had seen no need to exclude John or Rosie from the interview, which promised to be simple and nonviolent, mere information gathering. The artist was the victim, after all, not the perpetrator. 

And so they had gone out into the night together, the three of them. Rosie strapped to John's chest in her little carrier, John grinning and keeping pace right beside Sherlock. 

Lestrade and two other officers had met them at the artist's flat. It was small, cluttered with half-finished canvases and supplies, the smell of turpentine thick in the air. 

The artist, clearly already well-acquainted with the relative incompetence of law enforcement, had been rude and uncooperative.

Sherlock glanced over at John, caught John frowning at the artist, his brow furrowed up in distaste, and in one glorious rush of information realized that the artist wasn't being rude and uncooperative because he was annoyed—he was being rude and uncooperative because he'd stolen his own painting as a part of some dim-witted insurance scam. 

"Oh," he'd gasped, and John had _grinned_ at him, wide and toothsome and genuine. And he'd been high on it, so he'd kept going, and he'd made his deductions and he'd watched the haughty smile fall away from the artist's face in inverse proportion to the stunned awe on John's, and—

_Norbury,_ Mrs Hudson's voice, frantic, in his mind. _Norbury, Sherlock. Norbury!_

Lestrade moved to detain the artist. 

Sherlock finished his speech with a delighted flourish and a proud little bounce on the balls of his feet, had turned to beam at John, who had gone on grinning right back at him. And Rosie had grinned too, mimicking him, her whole face lit up, and she'd reached out at him with her grabby little hands—

—just as the artist twisted past Lestrade and cracked Sherlock right against the side of the head with a brush cup. Turpentine splashed down the back of his neck, paintbrushes clattering to the floor all around. He went to one knee, shielding his eyes, which had already begun to sting from the solvent. 

The artist shoved past, heading for the door. John felled him, immediately and instinctively, with a truly stunning left hook. 

John stood, breathing hard, Rosie still strapped to his chest. Sherlock blinked up at them from the floor through streaming eyes. 

"POW!" Rosie shrieked, clapping her hands. 

Lestrade, who had dropped to the ground in a scramble to cuff their now-prone suspect, doubled over and roared with surprised laughter. The other two officers joined in, and Rosie, always happy to be the center of attention, started giggling madly, the sound shrill. 

"Sherlock—" John said, not laughing, his chest still heaving. He crouched down, the movement awkward with Rosie kicking up such a fuss. Stretched out a hand.

Sherlock flailed out at him, his eyes squinted shut. "Keep her back—the turpentine. She shouldn't—don't let her breathe it." His heart was thundering in his chest. Everything around him seemed to be happening much too quickly. 

"Shit," John said, moving back out of range. "You need to wash that off your skin. Did you get any in your eyes?" 

Sherlock flailed out again, trying to shoo him further back. Rosie was still laughing, excited little whoops. His brain kept misfiring, kept trying to register the sound as panic.

"Take him down to the car," Lestrade said to one of the officers, who busied himself wrangling the dazed artist. 

Lestrade moved close, got Sherlock by the elbow, helped him up. He kicked at the paintbrushes that had scattered at his feet, sending one rolling off into the corner. "There's a toilet in the back, I think. Come on. That's gotta sting." 

Sherlock squinted back at John as he got to his feet. The skin on the back of his neck prickled. "Is she all right?" he demanded. "John, is she _all right?_ " 

Rosie was still giggling, high-pitched, perfectly delighted with the direction the evening's events had taken. He couldn't make sense of it. He had been looking right at her, and—

"John," he said, balking, turning back in spite of Lestrade tugging on his arm. "Is she—" 

"Sherlock, she's fine," John said. His voice was tight. He seemed winded, or perhaps half-panicked himself. "Christ. Go—just go." 

He took another stumbling step, stopped again. "Did she get splashed?" 

"No," John said. "She's fine—just—oh for God's sake—" 

There was a rustling, a bit of a fuss as John disentangled Rosie from his chest, passed her off to the startled officer standing next to him. 

She started to bawl as soon as she registered that the person holding her was a stranger, and Sherlock's heart lurched. His eyes stung. Lestrade was, irritatingly, still holding his elbow and trying to steer him in entirely the wrong direction. 

He tried to shake Lestrade off, tried to pull back. Rosie was sobbing now, great gasping heaving cries. 

"Take her out into the hall!" Lestrade shouted. "Please!" 

The officer complied, the wails receding, and Sherlock took another stumble step after her and came right up against John, who put steadying hands on his shoulders. 

"She's fine," John said. He spoke calmly, steadily, the soldier, the doctor in crisis mode. "Sherlock. She's fine. You're more shaken up than she is. She's out in the hall right now, showing off her lung capacity, which is, like everything else she does, truly remarkable. She's busy introducing herself to all of the neighbors. You need to go back into the bathroom and flush your skin with cool water. Did it get in your eyes?" 

"No," Sherlock said, swiping furiously at his watering eyes. "Just the fumes. John—" 

"She's fine," John said again, pushing at him. 

He went.

The bathroom was small, cramped, and John crowded him up against the sink, turned on the tap. Sherlock bent obligingly, splashed cool water on his face. 

John snatched up a flannel, ran it under the stream. He brought it up to the back of Sherlock's neck and wrung it out, let the water run a cold, soothing path down his skin. 

He repeated the motion again, and again, while Sherlock hunched over the tap, splashing his face until his eyes no longer wanted to glue themselves shut. 

John shut off the tap. He wrung out the flannel and then set the damp cloth back against Sherlock's neck, held it there. 

Sherlock could hear him breathing. Without the running water as a distraction, the little room suddenly felt very small, very close. 

"You're sure it didn't get you in your eyes," John said, his voice quiet. His breath was coming fast. "Or your mouth? Nose?" 

"No," Sherlock said. "My head was turned. I—" 

The back of his shirt and jacket were wet, soaked through from the splash of turpentine and then the repeated dousing of cool water. John had not been particularly tidy about his task. The fabric was cold against his skin. 

"She—" Sherlock said. He thought he could still hear Rosie wailing, those miserable heartbroken sobs. 

"She's fine," John said again, not moving away. His hand tightened on the back of Sherlock's neck, pressing the damp flannel against his nape. "She's fine, there wasn't much in the cup and you caught the brunt of it." 

"She was right there," Sherlock said. The cloth was cold against his neck. He felt cold all over. His hands had started to shake. Rosie had been grinning at him. She'd been grinning and reaching out for him and he'd been so _pleased_ with himself that he'd completely ignored—

"Sherlock." 

"She was right there," he said again. He was suddenly quite sure he could not go on standing. His teeth chattered, and John lifted the cloth away from his neck.

"Whoa," John said, catching him under the arms as he wobbled, sagged for the floor. "Are you—oh. Okay, all right, we're sitting. Sure." 

He found himself arranged up against the wall, knees up under his chin. John pressed in close next to him, one hand at his neck, taking his pulse. 

"Your skin might be a little irritated," John said, maddeningly calm. "You should take a cool shower when you get home, yeah?" 

"John." 

"Sherlock, it was just a bit of paint thinner. You're fine. It's—" 

He huffed. John thought he was upset about being splashed with a mild irritant? He'd done worse to himself in his own kitchen. "Your daughter, John. I put her in danger. I—" 

John blew out a frustrated breath, let his hand fall away from Sherlock's neck. "I'm the one who strapped a baby to my chest and walked into the middle of a criminal investigation. Which, when you say it out loud, sounds like the _stupidest_ thing to have—" 

Sherlock shut his eyes. John wasn't understanding. He had led the way, and John had followed. John had _trusted_ him, somehow, even after everything. And he'd assumed it was safe. He'd been arrogant and overly confident, smug and sure. Again. 

He'd chided Mycroft for his myopia. He'd not bothered to correct his own. 

"Sherlock," John said, concern in his voice, and that was unacceptable. How could he be _concerned,_ when— 

"She could have—" 

"She didn't." 

"She was frightened." She'd been crying. She'd been _wailing._ He didn't think he'd ever get the sound out of his head. 

"Sherlock, she was—for Christ's sake, she was laughing. She was over the moon about the whole thing until we panicked. Those tears out there? She's upset because _we're_ upset. Not because of—anything that happened. Or could have happened." 

He struggled to breathe steadily. Ducked his head, pressed his forehead against his knees. His hair was damp, cold tendrils curling against his neck. 

Rosie had been eating chopped fruit out of a little bowl, her hands and face sticky with it. She'd been warm and safe and content and he'd taken her away from that, had put her in harm's way because he'd wanted to seem _clever._

"Sherlock," John said, tugging at him, forcing his head up. His vision blurred and he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. "Neither of us know how to do this, yeah? We're figuring it out as we go along." 

He shook his head, words catching in his throat. 

"Those first months," John said. "After Mary died. I didn't want—I couldn't stand it, Sherlock. I had a daughter, this little—this perfect little girl, and she depended on me. She depended on me, and I didn't want her around. I didn't—I was failing her, every single day. I handed her away to anyone who would take her off my hands. I couldn’t even look at her." 

Molly at the door, Rosie in her arms. _Anyone but you,_ she'd said. 

"People have a tendency to—be overly polite. When they're feeling uncomfortable or on the spot," John said, and there was something ugly in his voice, something dark and bitter. "And what makes someone more uncomfortable than grief?" 

His mind went to Gloria Trevor, gentle and sad, her grey cat winding circles around her ankles. 

"So people would ask me," John said. "They'd act very concerned, and they'd say _How have you been?_ and I—ha. Everyone expected me to say I was fine. Or—you know. Not fine but getting by. Getting better. To _lie._ Because that's polite, yeah? But I wasn't—" he took a breath, shook his head. "I wasn't feeling very polite. And so I'd look right at them, at whatever unlucky bastard had thought to ask, and I'd be _honest._ I'd say _Hey, you know what, it's been shit. I cheated on my wife and now she's dead._ " 

Sherlock took slow steady breaths, the tiles hard and cold beneath him. His hands twitched. 

John sniffed, hard, his lips pressing together tightly in a grim smile. "And the funny thing is that no one actually wants—no one who asks you how you are _actually_ wants to know how you are, Sherlock. Did you know that? You never—you've never really bothered with small talk, so—" 

"John," Sherlock said, his heart twisting, cracking. 

John shifted where he sat, let out another one of those unhappy laughs. "Getting off topic, yeah? I could see it on their faces, Sherlock. The reception staff at the surgery. My next-door neighbor. They'd get that look, that uncomfortable cornered look when I'd said too much, and it was easy after that. They'd try to edge away. They'd say something noncommittal like _Well, if you need anything…_ and I'd say _You know, actually, I hate to ask, but it would be such a big help if you could take my daughter for the night, it's been so hard—_ and that was that, Sherlock. It was as easy as that. They'd do anything to make me stop talking, and I'd do anything to stop facing reality for a little while. And I just handed her off. My daughter. My little girl. I just gave her away. Over and over and over again. To anyone." 

_Anyone but you._

"John," he said again. His wits seemed to have entirely deserted him. 

John made a strangled noise and that was it, it was too much. Sherlock shifted over until they were pressed close again, and he only hesitated for a moment before bringing up one arm to wrap around John's shoulders, wincing as the clinging wet fabric of his jacket and shirt dragged against his skin. 

John sagged against him, defeated. There was no resistance in him, no fight. He breathed out slowly, shut his eyes. 

Sherlock scooted a bit closer, his back cramping. The chill from the tiles seeped up through his trousers.

John was warm and solid in his arms. 

He lowered his head, lips grazing against John's hair. Spoke softly. "Someone told me once that people are funny about grief. That it's hard to speak, so you say nothing. And it gets easier to say nothing, until ugliness is all that remains."

John shivered at his words, his shoulders hitching. He did not pull away. 

"After—" Sherlock paused, a lump rising in his throat, his chest hot and cold at once. "After Mary. It was ugly." 

John's shoulders jerked again, one of those miserable, self-deprecating laughs.

"It was ugly, John," he said again. "But you turned it around. You could have drowned in it. You came close. It was dark and it was cold and it was—" his breath caught and he stopped, steadied himself. His skin was stinging and chilled. John was warm and still and so very close. "You could have drowned, but you didn't. I wanted—I tried. To help you. And I made a mess of it. But you did it yourself, John. You pulled yourself up." 

He thought of John, in the back of the car on that long, quiet drive to London, saying _Christ, I really just want to hug my daughter,_ his broken, defeated voice as he admitted that being away from her didn't make it easier, it didn't make it better. His face, lost and desolate, like the dark countryside that pressed in around them.

And Sherlock hadn't known what to say (he so rarely did, when it really mattered), and so he'd hesitated and then cautiously ventured _Maybe now it's time to do things differently_ and John had—he _had._ He'd gone home and he'd done exactly what he'd wanted, he'd hugged his daughter close, he'd breathed her in, and though Sherlock had not been privy to the words that he mumbled into her ear, he could deduce them well enough. 

"You've made mistakes," Sherlock said. "But nothing you can't come back from. And whatever you felt before, I can promise you that you are not—you're not failing her now." 

Silence fell between them.

"I was meant to be comforting you," John said, his voice muffled against Sherlock's shoulder, his tone only mildly reproachful. 

"Oh, was that what that was?" 

John jerked with laughter, a surprised hiccup of sound. "Cock." 

"Yes," he agreed mildly. 

They sat in silence together, his muscles cramping, his back and arms prickling and chilled beneath the damp fabric of his jacket. He found himself entirely unwilling to move. 

They did this now, he reminded himself. They hugged. For comfort. It was allowed. He could—he could. 

"You were right," he said, finally. 

John shifted against him, pulled back just far enough to meet his eyes. "Well, that was bound to happen eventually." He paused. "Um. Right about what, exactly?" 

"Rosie's not to come on cases." 

John breathed out, a heavy sort of sigh. Nodded. Did not move to stand up or pull further away. His eyes met and held Sherlock's before skittering away, focusing somewhere on the wall. 

"Sherlock," he said, after some time. 

"Hm?" 

"Did you—notice anything? When we came in here?" 

"I notice everything, John." 

John scoffed. 

Sherlock pulled back, affronted. "What? What am I meant to have noticed? You're implying that I've missed something." 

"Well—yes." 

"What? What have I missed?" 

John held his gaze, his face quite serious, before his lips curled up into a smirk. "Look up on the wall. Over the door." 

Sherlock looked. Blinked. "That's—" 

"The missing painting, yeah." 

"He hung his own stolen painting in the loo." 

"It—yep. Yes. It appears that he did." 

"Why would he—?" 

"Sherlock," John said, his entire face crinkling up with amusement and it was _wonderful._ "This is the same man whose grand escape plan involved flinging around some paint brushes and splashing you with a small quantity of turpentine. I know you tend to think _everyone's_ an idiot, but you have to admit that some are, ah, a bit worse than others, yeah?"

He chuckled, tipped his head back against the wall. 

Next to him, John's shoulders had begun to shake with suppressed laughter. 

"It's not a very good painting," Sherlock said. 

John snorted, covered his mouth with his hand. "No, it's not." 

Sherlock looked at John and something inside him cracked open, spilled out, flooding him with warmth. John had tilted his head back against the peeling wallpaper and his eyes were squinted shut, his whole form convulsing as he finally gave up trying to hold in his mirth. 

He was so close. Close and warm and if Sherlock were someone else, if he were a different person entirely he could do it, close the gap between them in a way that had nothing to do with comfort. He could rock forward and press their lips together, pull John's laughter into his own lungs. 

He could curl one hand around the back of John's neck, through the soft close-clipped hair at his nape (he knew what it felt like to do that, now), could let the other hand wander to splay out along John's side, could nudge their faces close and bump their noses and watch John's eyes flutter shut, could breathe against John's lips and tangle their tongues together until John was no longer laughing but sighing instead, could let himself be pressed back and braced up against the wall as John wrested control, as his hands (small and warm and capable) cupped his cheeks briefly before sliding down lower, curled against the waistband of his trousers, unfastening and unbuttoning and fumbling to get closer—

John's giggles wound down, faded into one last soft chuckle that seemed to heave from his lungs. His head was still against the wall, his smile still wide and genuine and painfully fond.

He had no idea what had been running through Sherlock's head. He had no idea how badly Sherlock wanted to—how much he _wanted._

"We should—" John said, inclining his head towards the door. He was still smiling. 

Sherlock stared, stared and stared, wanted to soak up as much of that expression as he could, for as long as he could have it. He couldn't have what he wanted, but he could have this. And there had been a time, not too long ago, where he thought that even a smile would be too much to ask.

"Yes," Sherlock agreed, his voice a little breathless. His limbs trembled with restraint.

John pushed up off the ground and turned around, offered his hand. 

Sherlock grasped it, allowed himself to be tugged to his feet. Warm fingers slipped through his own, brief, fleeting. Treasured.

*

Lestrade waited in the hall, Rosie in his arms. 

She'd quieted, was no longer screaming or wailing or fussing but seemed, in fact, quite content to be gently bounced as he paced back and forth amongst rows of painted canvases. 

There was no sign of the other two officers, or of the suspect. He supposed they had already taken him in.

Lestrade raised his brows as they approached, said nothing. 

Sherlock shook his head, just once, hoping against all hope that Lestrade was perceptive enough to let it go. 

Rosie _squealed_ at the sight of him, kicking and writhing, arms stretched out. 

Sherlock glanced at John, but John shook his head. 

"Go on, it's you she wants." 

_Anyone but you._

He went, his throat tight. Plucked her neatly out of Lestrade's arms and snugged her against his chest, propped his chin on her head. She fisted at the wet back of his shirt and made a dismayed sound, rearing back from the clammy fabric. She blinked up at him, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry we frightened you," he said, tipping his head down so he was looking her directly in the eye. "Grave error in judgment. Won't happen again." 

She reached out, squeezed his nose. 

Lestrade cleared his throat. It was not particularly loud, but it seemed a pointed sound. 

"Won't happen again," Sherlock said, slightly louder this time. He cut his eyes towards Lestrade, relieved that he seemed mollified. 

*

John was quiet in the cab. 

Sherlock looked out the window, pretended to watch the scenery slide by, kept his eyes on John's distorted reflection. 

"It's late," John said, when they pulled up against the kerb at Baker Street. He did not move towards the door. 

"Yes," Sherlock said.

"Are you all right?" 

"Of course." 

"Cool shower," John said. "Just in case. Yeah?" 

"Mm." 

He lingered, just a bit longer than necessary. Looked at John, his face half-lit by streetlight. At Rosie, cast in shadow, breathing deeply and evenly. She had been warm, and happy, and content, and he'd risked that. 

"Good night," he said. 

*

He went upstairs to his empty flat. Hung up his coat. Scratched at the skin on the back of his neck, his fingers brushing against the still-damp collar of his shirt. 

He went into the bathroom, peeled the wet shirt away from his skin. Turned on the shower. Undressed and stepped under the spray, eyes closed. Cool water coursed over him, flattening his hair, making his skin prickle up into gooseflesh. 

He turned off the water, stepped back out onto the tiles, shivering. Toweled himself off, put on pyjamas and a dressing gown. 

He did not feel much like going to sleep. 

He went out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, intending to start the kettle. 

Stopped. 

John was in the sitting room, standing by the window, looking out through the glass. Rosie in his arms, her head on his shoulder, her plump cheek scrunched up against his neck. 

For a moment he stood quite still, certain it was an illusion. He'd left John downstairs in the cab. John had gone home. 

John turned around. His brows were furrowed up, his face pinched, worried. 

"Neck all right?" he asked. 

Sherlock frowned. "Yes, of course." 

John nodded, lips pursed. He looked down at Rosie. 

"Cabbie had gone a few streets before it occurred to me that I didn't—that I didn't really want to leave." 

"It's late," Sherlock said, bewildered, not at all sure what it was he was seeing written on John's face. 

"Yeah," John said. He nodded. "Yes. Yeah, it is." 

"There's a cot," Sherlock blurted. 

John blinked. "What?" 

"A cot. Upstairs, in your—in your old room. If you wanted—if she wanted to nap. To sleep. She can." 

"You bought a cot." 

"No, of course not. A shop owner owed me a favour." 

John looked at him, shook his head, a small smile on his face. Sherlock did not quite know what to make of that smile. 

He took a deep breath, looked down at the ground. 

Rosie made a small sleepy murmur but did not stir awake as John moved towards the door. He paused in front of Sherlock. 

Sherlock found he could not quite lift his eyes back to meet his gaze. So he went on looking at the ground, listening as John's footsteps retreated, as the stairs creaked. Listened to the achingly familiar sound of John, upstairs, in his room, the one loose floorboard groaning as he stepped over it. 

He went over to the window, looked outside, down at the street. Watched the people bustling past under the cover of night. 

The footsteps stopped. 

Upstairs, John would be coming face-to-face with the cot. With the little collection of stuffed animals. With the little mobile dangling from the ceiling. With the cheerful bedding and the chest of drawers and the changing table and the baby monitor with the freshly installed batteries.

Panic flushed through his system, hot, bright.

This would not be so easily passed off as an experiment. Or an afterthought. 

The stairs creaked behind him, too soon, too soon, he wasn't ready, he hadn't steeled himself—

He turned around. 

John was standing in the doorway. He was holding a baby monitor in one hand, its twin upstairs on the little table next to the cot. He looked utterly lost. 

Sherlock's heart lurched. He swallowed. 

"You did all this," John said. 

Sherlock bit his lip. Nodded.

"Why?" 

He straightened up, squared his shoulders. "We keep unusual hours. It seemed prudent that she have a place to sleep should the need arise—" 

"Sherlock," John said. His voice cracked. 

"I'm not sure what you want me to say." 

"That—" John said. "Upstairs. That's not. Convenience. Or prudence. That's not a—collapsible pen in the sitting room, or a highchair in the kitchen, or keeping some books and toys on hand. That's—that's—" 

The air seemed to curdle. 

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Sherlock," John said again. He seemed unable to formulate a coherent thought, let alone a sentence. He shut his eyes, breathed, appeared to rally. "Upstairs. What you did in that room. That's not just a place for Rosie to rest her head when she needs a nap. That's a _home._ "

He cleared his throat. "Well. Of course. I want her to always feel at home here." 

"Why?" 

Sherlock winced. "Because it's your home, John. It will always be your home, even if you're not here. So obviously it stands to reason that it would be her home as well." 

"Why?" John's voice was barely more than a whisper. His eyes were damp, gleaming in the lamplight. 

"I don't know how to answer that question, John." 

John set the monitor down on the coffee table, stepped slowly forward until he was very close. Sherlock watched him approach, fine tremors running through his limbs. His breath was coming fast. 

"I have a daughter," John said. 

Sherlock looked at him, faintly alarmed. He did not seem to be disoriented, or ill. His pupils were a normal size. He was not slurring his words. 

"What?" 

"She's not quite two yet. I'm told that much of what's to come in this next year will be—um. Terrible. She's amazing, of course, without a doubt the most perfect child ever conceived in the history of mankind but—well. There's no denying the fact that she's loud, and messy, and her very existence all but guarantees that any attempt to stick to a so-called normal schedule will be in vain." 

Sherlock shook his head, took a half step back. Blinked. "John?"

"She has to come first. I'm not going to be able to just drop everything and run off at the drop of a hat. And she needs a full night's sleep, so loud noises in the middle of the night just aren't on. There can't be—body parts in the fridge for her to find, or chemical experiments on the kitchen table. And that's just Rosie, Sherlock, I haven't even really gotten to me, yet. I'm—" his voice cracked, and he shook his head, looked up at the ceiling, sucked in a breath. "I'm not a good person. I've done terrible things to the people I claim to love. I'm impatient, and angry, and—"

"Whatever you're doing, stop," Sherlock said, rapidly careening from concern to full-on panic. 

"Does that bother you?" John asked, bringing his gaze back down from the ceiling, looking steadily at Sherlock. His eyes were bright. 

"What do you—" he stopped, looked at John again. Heat bloomed in his chest, spread up his neck, crept upwards to his cheeks. There was something happening, something momentous, something he could not quite grasp. 

"Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other." 

The air left Sherlock's lungs. 

"Who—" his voice cracked. He paused, swallowed. Tried again. "Who said anything about flatmates?"

"You did, I think," John said. "I just wasn't listening." 

His lips moved, failed to produce sound. 

"It's not going to be the same," John said. "It's different, now. We're different. It's been years since—" he stopped, cleared his throat. "It's going to be different." 

Sherlock looked away, his eyes sweeping the room, the flat he'd pieced back together. The flat that had felt so very wrong; not for being different, but instead for trying to pretend it was still the same. He looked at the pen tucked behind John's chair, the pile of books and puzzle toys on the floor at the foot of his own. The bat on the mantel, not _his_ bat, not the old one, but the one that Rosie had become so oddly taken with, the one she reached for every single time. The kitchen table, clear but for the microscope and a neatly lidded box of slides. The vibrant purple handprints, large and small, marching up the wall behind the sofa. 

He returned his gaze to John.

"Good," he said. 

John shut his eyes. "Good?" 

"Yes," Sherlock said, decisive now. "It shouldn't be the same. It would be wrong if it were." 

John made a small sound, shifted where he stood. He met Sherlock's eyes, looked away. 

"Will you forgive me if I do something incredibly stupid?" John asked. 

"Past experiences would suggest that to be a likely outcome, yes." 

A faint amused expression flickered across John's face, there and gone. 

"Good," he said, and he took another half-step forward, right up close. He lifted his hand, cupped Sherlock's face, drew his thumb along his cheek. Took a breath, his hand trembling slightly. 

They stood for a moment, breathing each other's air. The room was all at once too small and too large, overwarm, stifling. 

John met his eyes, raised his brows. A silent question. He hesitated, his thumb still circling, maddeningly, on Sherlock's cheek. 

Sherlock shut his eyes. 

There was a pressure against his lips, firm, dry. John's lips. John was kissing him. _John_ was—

It was a brief kiss, gentle, chaste, and John pulled back with his hand still cupping Sherlock's face, his breath puffing warm against his nose. 

Sherlock realized his eyes were still scrunched shut. He blinked them open, his head swimming. John was still there. John was _still there._ John was standing quite close, his hand still cupping Sherlock's cheek, his face open and questioning, his breath warm against Sherlock's lips. 

John was—John had—

He blinked. Blinked again. Blinked and blinked and still John remained, pensive, waiting, his thumb stilled against Sherlock's cheek. 

_Mad. Charming. Likeable. Unsafe._

There was tension in John's face, creeping in, a slow worry, and Sherlock had seen it before, seen it when he took too long to process, and it was suddenly unacceptable that it could happen now, here, in this moment. 

He surged forward, clumsy, uncoordinated, his body moving before his brain had completely caught up, and he caught John's lips with his own. Their teeth clacked together and he didn't care, didn't care, because John's lips were somehow firm and soft all at once, and his chin rasped pleasingly against Sherlock's skin, and his smell and taste were both comfortingly familiar and wholly alien. 

John made a sound, muffled, and the hand that wasn't cupping Sherlock's face came up to tangle in his hair, warm against his skull. Sherlock took a stumble step backwards, drawing John with him, bumping up against the desk. His hands roamed, unsure where to settle on John's frame, landing lightly on his shoulders, his upper arms, his waist. 

John kissed him again, a hard press of his lips, pulled back. His breath was coming quite fast, his face flushed. 

"Sherlock," he said. 

"I—" Sherlock said. He swallowed. Shook his head. Tried again, helpless, his brain wiped blank, his very skin humming with sensation. It was difficult to breathe. "John." 

His hands, which had come to rest at John's waist, curled against his hips, fingers twining through the belt loops on his jeans, reluctant to let John pull further away. 

"Was that—?" John started, licked his lips, looked down at where Sherlock's hands held him still. Looked back up. Seemed to lose his train of thought. 

Sherlock's brain struggled mightily to come back online.

They touched, now. For comfort. They did that. It was—it was not strange, or noteworthy at all, really, for him or John to reach out and embrace. It was all right. They did that. 

But John had _kissed_ him. 

They didn't do that. Not for real. He thought about it, imagined it, but they didn't _do_ that, he'd only ever be able to think it, he'd never be able to actually _have_ it, and—

But John had—

_Mad. Charming. Likeable. Unsafe._

John had, at some point or another, used those words on his blog to describe Sherlock. The blog was, almost in its entirety, about Sherlock. 

_I only had to read his blog to find out what he liked,_ Eurus had said. And that had been what she'd done, hadn't it? She'd read John's blog, she'd read all of the things he'd said and all of the things he hadn't, and she'd crafted a persona designed to appeal specifically to his tastes. 

The woman she'd pretended to be had been nothing like Mary, outer softness with hidden edges. Instead she'd been unusual, charming. _Risky._

"Was that your idea of incredibly stupid?" Sherlock blurted, his lips still tingling. His knees felt weak.

"I—" John tried for a smile. Sherlock tried not to find it endearing. Failed. "I hope not?" He paused again, looked up at the ceiling. "Um. Was it—um. Incredibly stupid?" 

"No," Sherlock said. And then: "It was me." 

John cocked his head, bewildered. "What was you?" 

"That's what she was trying to tell me. Your blog. It—" he shook his head, clamped his mouth shut. His hands were on John's waist. John was standing very, very close. John had _kissed_ him. There was no need, absolutely no need, to speak about his sister or any of the endless series of mistakes that they had made on the road to this moment. 

"My blog? What are you on about?" 

"I don't know," Sherlock said. He cleared his throat, looked down at John's lips. "Processing error. Disregard that." 

"All right," John said, laughing, shaking his head, fond. "Look, this—it doesn't have to—I just wanted. To kiss you. Always have, really. Ha. Feels weird to say that out loud. If you don't want—I'm not trying to. Um. Christ, I'm cocking this up. If you want to forget that, or pretend it never happened, just—you can just say the word. I'm not—" 

"John." 

"I know you don't do the whole 'romantic entanglement' thing, and—"

"John." 

"Even if you did, I'm a fairly shit choice, as far as partners go, and I know that, but—" 

"John!"

John stopped talking. Looked up at him expectantly, his face caught somewhere between fondness and worry. 

"I am—entangled," Sherlock said. 

John's face fell. (Why?) He nodded, made to step back, stuttered to a halt, caught by Sherlock's fingers in his belt loops. Looked up with a creased brow, frowned. "Sherlock?" 

Oh. _Oh._

"With you," he added. "Obviously." 

"What?" 

Sherlock huffed out a sigh, impatient, frustrated. John was _right there_ and he wasn't understanding, and, even worse, he kept trying to back away. Perhaps repeating himself was necessary. It had been a long night, after all. 

"I'm _entangled—_ " he spoke the word with some measure of distaste, "—with you, John. Obviously. Have been for years. Haven't you noticed?" 

John stopped trying to back away (Sherlock felt a momentary surge of victory at this), but did not look any closer to actual comprehension (distressing.)

"Sherlock," he said. "I have no idea what you're—" 

"As ever, you see, but you do not—" 

"Observe, yeah, got it, thanks," John said. He crossed his arms, widened his stance. Sherlock's hands remained, thrillingly, where he had left them. "When is this 'entanglement' meant to have taken place?" 

Sherlock's mouth had gone dry. He flexed his fingers, found himself wholly unwilling to relinquish his grip on John. Settled for lifting his shoulders in a helpless shrug instead. 

"Sherlock," John said. He pressed one hand to the bridge of his nose, pinched. Tipped his head up so that he was meeting Sherlock's eyes. "You need to be—clear. You're not being clear, right now. I don't know what you're—I don't know, exactly, what it is that you want." He dropped his gaze down to where Sherlock's hands had tightened their hold. 

"What I want," Sherlock said. He spoke slowly, the words heavy.

"Yes." 

There were not enough words in the world for all that he wanted. 

"I—" he said. 

"Hm?" 

"You." 

John blinked, uncomprehending. "Me?" 

"You," Sherlock said again. "What I want. It's you, John. Always." 

"Oh," John said, his voice sounding faint. "And when you say that, you mean—?" 

"In any way that you'll have me." 

John looked down at Sherlock's hands again, his fingers curled through his belt loops, white-knuckled. He looked back up. "So if I were to kiss you again…?"

Sherlock huffed and closed the small gap between them, crashing their lips together. His fingers curled in John's belt loops and tugged, pulled him closer, their bodies flush. John's hands came up once more to cradle his face, holding him steady, taking control of the kiss. 

His head was spinning, his heart pounding, and the world around him fell silent. 

He was on the ground. How had that happened? He had fallen to his knees on the bristly carpeting, John right there with him, breathing hard, half-laughing. John tipped forward, pressed their foreheads together, and their shared quiet laughter puffed in warm breaths between them.

"Sherlock," John said again, smiling, his face flushed, his mouth swollen, the skin around his lips rubbed pink. His smile was a genuine thing, all surprised and bewildered joy. It lifted years from of his face. 

He was smiling back. It was impossible not to, his own mounting joy had built up the momentum of a runaway train, careening and crashing through him; he could not have controlled it even if he tried. 

"I don't understand this, John," he said, shutting his eyes. "You don't—"

"I thought you didn't—" John said. "You always said—" 

"There was never a good time to—" 

"Oh my God," John said, and then his hands were on Sherlock's face again, pulling him back in for another kiss. Sherlock went willingly. 

There was too much data at once, too much input, not enough time to process. He ignored it, lost in the slide of John's lips against his own, John's hands in his hair, the corner of the desk digging into his back. John was there. John was with him. And they—they did this, now. So it seemed. 

All at once he needed to speak, with a pressing urgency, needed to make John _understand._ He pulled back, abrupt, suddenly overwhelmed with it, emotion pooling hot in his chest, words sticking in his throat. 

"In case I wasn't clear," he said, and his voice was choked, breathless, barely recognizable as his own. "Stay, John. I want you here, with me. All the time. Both of you." 

"Yeah," John said, nodding, smiling an odd lopsided smile. His eyes were damp. "Yes, all right, yes." 

He shook his head, because it couldn't be that simple, not after all this time.

"Sherlock," John said, leaning forward, cupping his face, looking right into his eyes. "I keep ending up here. I keep inventing reasons to—to stay longer, or to come by. You were right. This is home to me. It always has been." He swallowed, tongue darting out to wet his lips. "It always will be, I think. Yeah." 

He was unable to resist, helpless in his want, and he leaned forward to taste John's lips again. 

His knees creaked against the floor and he broke away, breathing hard. Looked at John, feeling more exposed and vulnerable than he ever had in his life. 

John looked back at him. His brow furrowed and then cleared. He shut his eyes, breathed in, opened his eyes again. "Yeah?" 

"Yes," Sherlock said, quiet but firm. "Yes." 

John stood up, wincing a little bit, held out his hand. Sherlock took it, let himself be pulled to his feet. 

They stood regarding one other, the silence heavy and close. He was uncertain, now, removed from the immediacy of the moment. There was heat in his face, a nervous skip in his chest.

John squeezed his hand, his palm warm, his grip strong. Laced their fingers together. 

Galvanized, Sherlock nodded, took a step, then another. A gentle tug brought John with him, hand-in-hand. He walked towards his bedroom with a confidence he did not quite feel. 

John shut the door behind them. His face was difficult to read in the darkness. 

He swallowed, looked down. 

John laughed, soft, embarrassed. "I'm bloody terrified, Sherlock." 

He looked up. Swallowed again. "Oh." 

They stared at each other. Sherlock was suddenly struck with the strange, inexplicable desire to laugh. Something must have shown on his face, because John's lip twitched. And then they _were_ laughing, helplessly. Sherlock took a stumble-step forward and John's arms were right there, and their lips crashed together, muffling giggles with clumsy kisses. 

"Ridiculous," John said, wrestling with Sherlock's dressing gown, his t-shirt. "This is absolutely—do you have any idea, Sherlock? Any idea how long I've—" 

He shook his head, crashed their lips back together, cutting him off. He didn't want to know, didn't want to hear that John had been—that all this time, John had been _wanting_ , the same way that he had. If he thought about it, it would drown him, all those years of silence. 

"I've loved you for a long time, John," he said, quite serious, when he finally pulled back. "I think that's enough to be going on with, don't you?" 

John's expression seemed to collapse in on itself, his eyes damp, and he nodded hard, grabbing for Sherlock again, walking him backwards towards the bed. 

They fell back together, Sherlock's familiar bedding suddenly unchartered territory, alien and strange. The sheets were cool against his overheated skin. 

And then John's lips were on him, and John's hands were on him, and he gave himself over entirely. 

*

"I can start moving some things over tomorrow," John said, later, his voice hushed in the darkness. He was spooned up behind Sherlock, warm strong chest pressed up against Sherlock's back, arm slung around Sherlock's waist. "It'll be a process. I haven't—I haven't really gone through anything. Any of. Of Mary's things. I've been putting it off." 

He was uncertain how to respond, how to navigate these particular unchartered waters. He settled for shifting in place, slightly, just enough to let John know that he was awake, that he was listening. 

John's arm tightened around him, briefly. 

"If that's all right," he added.

It seemed that speech would be required after all. 

"Of course," he said. "In your own time." 

"But quite quickly, right?" John chuckled, pressed a kiss to the back of Sherlock's neck. He could not quite suppress a blissful shiver. 

"I was trying to be tactful." 

"You?"

He snorted, shifted and rolled so he was facing John, his head pillowed on his curled arm. John's face was amused, his eyes dancing with mirth. There was no uncertainty in him, no regret. 

Something loosened in Sherlock's chest. A knot of worry he hadn't even realized he'd been carrying. He melted further against John, reveling in the warmth of him, in the fact that he could _do this._

"Fine," he sniffed, aware that his haughty tone was being immediately contradicted by the way he sought to burrow further into John's arms. "Just buy new things. Never leave again." 

John chuckled again, the sound gentle and hushed against his skin. He looked _happy,_ happy and young. Sherlock could not recall the last time he had seen him that happy. Was a bit shocked to think that it might, somehow, have to do with him. 

John had fetched the baby monitor when he'd gotten up for water and damp flannels, and they lay together quietly for some time, just listening to Rosie's gentle breathing in the dark. 

"She mostly sleeps through the night now," John said. "Finally. So you don't have to—she shouldn't disturb you. Much." 

"It's not a bother," he said, and meant it. 

"We'll work something out, you know," he said. "For cases. We'll make this work." 

"Her safety is—"

"Of paramount importance, I know," John said. "I know. And that's why we'll work something out. I can't promise it won't be—challenging. But—"

"John," Sherlock said. He reached out, touched John's cheek. Marveled at the simple fact that he could do this, now. 

"She loves you, you know," John said. His face was very serious in the dark. He took a breath, hesitated. "And so do I." 

He shut his eyes, tried to memorize the precise cadence of John's words. 

"Just buy new things," he said again, his voice muffled against the pillow. "Never leave again." 

John laughed, a genuine, startled bark of laughter. His breath was warm and sweet against Sherlock's face.

"Go to sleep," he said. "Tomorrow's going to be a good day." 

Sherlock smiled, his smile turning into a grin as John leaned forward and pressed a hard kiss against his lips. 

He lay awake for some time, listening to John's breathing slow and even out. Listening to Rosie fuss quietly through the monitor. Acclimating himself to their presence. 

John grumbled something in his sleep, warm heavy arm tightening around Sherlock's waist. Sherlock pressed a light kiss to the top of his head, lips just barely grazing his hair. 

When he fell asleep, he slept deeply. 

For the first time in months, he did not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote. 
> 
> A huge thank you to everyone who's been reading along. And, in particular, thank you to [thetimemoves](http://www.thetimemoves.tumblr.com/), for bidding on me and for providing the inspiration that turned into this story. <3 
> 
> As mentioned in earlier chapters, I've posted some outtakes on my [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-outtake) if you are interested in reading further.
> 
> *
> 
> The incredible and talented Khorazir has made the most jaw-droppingly beautiful artwork for this chapter: ["Redecorating."](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/160314006153/redecorating-inspired-by-the-brilliant-s4-and) This was such a lovely surprise, I cannot thank you enough!

**Author's Note:**

> Stop by and say hi on [Tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] (Never) Turn Your Back to the Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11196546) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




End file.
